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THE QUESTION: 

" If a man die> shall he live again t" 

Job xiv. 14. 



THE QUESTION: 

" If a man die, shall he live again f ' 

Job xiv. 14. 

A BRIEF HISTORY AND EXAMINATION 
OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM 

BY 

EDWARD CLODD 

M 
WITH A POSTSCRIPT BY 
PROFESSOR H. E. ARMSTRONG, F.R.S. 



' Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul 
When hot for certainties in this our life." 

George Meredith. 



NEW YORK 
EDWARD J. CLODE 



"BFio^ 



COPYRIGHT 1918 BY 
EDWARD J. CLODB 



.AR-I 1918 






PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



©GU492411 



TO 
MY VALUED FRIEND 

Professor HENRY EDWARD ARMSTRONG 

PH.D., LL.D., D.SC., F.R.S. 



PREFACE 

THE subject of this book is not a history of 
the origin of the belief in immortality, but 
an examination of the evidence on which 
those who call themselves Spiritualists base that 
belief. 

It is to be regretted that this general term should 
have been appropriated by them; Materialists, they 
should have been named, because they assert that 
souls are made of highly tenuous matter. But the 
mischief is done and the self -applied term must re- 
main their monopoly. 

Two generations have passed since Spiritualism 
gained a footing in this country, wherefore it seems 
well that its origin and early history should have 
record. Few know that it came of tainted parent- 
age and that it grew up in an atmosphere of fraud, 
which still clings to it. 

My wife has helped me in the tedious work of col- 
lecting materials and of revising proofs. The thank- 
less task of proof-reading has also been undertaken 
by my friend Professor H. E. Armstrong, F.R.S., 
who further adds to my obligations in accepting the 
dedication of this book, and, of his own accord, con- 
tributing a Postscript. 

E. C. 

Strafford House, Aldeburgh, 
Suffolk, July, 1917. 



CONTENTS 



PART I 



INTRODUCTORY 



PAGE 

13 



PART II 
PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM 



I. HISTORICAL . 
II. EXPLANATORY 



33 

77 



PART III 

PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUALISM 



III. CLAIRVOYANCE .... 

IV. CRYSTAL-GAZING .... 
V. TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 

VI. PSYCHICAL MEDIUMS . 

VII. MRS. PIPER 

VIII. MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 



139 

154 
167 
181 
190 

215 



10 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IX. CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE .... 242 

X. THEOSOPHY — MADAME BLAVATSKY . . 250 

XI. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE — MRS. EDDY . . 257 

PART IV 

XII. SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM . . . 265 

POSTSCRIPT BY PROFESSOR H. E. ARMSTRONG, 

F.R.S. 
INDEX 301 



PART I 
INTRODUCTORY 



INTRODUCTORY 

" Yea, they have all one breath." — Ecclesiastes iii. 19. 

IN astronomical observations absolute accuracy 
is impossible, because eyes and other condi- 
tions vary in each observer: hence variation 
in the reports which each brings. To arrive at a 
sure result, there are made such additions to, or 
subtractions from, a number of observations of the 
same celestial object as will compensate for known 
causes of error. This is called " personal equation," 
a term once restricted to science, but now applied 
generally to denote allowances to be made in respect 
of opinions due to bias or idiosyncrasy. This 
equation, arrived at by the astronomer, eliminates 
error. Mathematically equipped, he issues The 
Nautical Almanack, which, for the guidance of sea- 
men on long voyages, tabulates the exact places of 
the leading heavenly bodies on each day for a 
period of four years. The astronomer reckons 
backwards as easily as forwards: he calculates the 
date of an eclipse that happened centuries ago, or 
the year when a comet will return. For the material 
on which he works is found to be unvarying in its 
operation. 

Not thus is it with the psychologist. He has to 
deal with a complex and unstable organ — the most 

13 



14 THE QUESTION 

marvellous thing in the world, the human brain: 
a mass of matter of which more than four-fifths is 
water, and containing, it is computed, about three 
thousand million cells whose motor, sensory and 
association centres are located in its cortex or outer 
grey rind. It is an apparatus so delicately poised 
that the wonder is not that it sometimes goes wrong, 
but that it ever goes right. No certitude can attach 
to its behaviour; there is always risk of the abnormal 
to upset calculations. 

Once more to contrast psychology and astronomy. 
The irregularities in the motion of Uranus set the 
mathematicians in quest of the position of the dis- 
turbing body: the brilliant result was the discovery 
of the planet Neptune. But what formula can we 
apply to the irregular activities of the mind? The 
normal mind has its fallacies, the abnormal mind 
has its delusions and illusions, and as if these were 
not enough to baffle us, there is the strange pheno- 
menon of multiple, dissociated " personality " which 
the late Mr. Myers termed the " subhminal self," 
literally, "beneath the threshold" (limen) of actual 
or present consciousness. Some have misconstrued 
this as implying an alter ego, whereas what is meant 
is a cerebral region wherein are stored-up myriads 
of impressions which have passed unheeded by us 
into our potential consciousness, and which become 
active under various, often abnormal, mental states. 
The most notable example of the " subliminal self " 
or " selves," since Mr. Myers admits the plural form, 
is that of the neurasthenic " Miss Beauchamp " (an 
assumed name) with her fourfold states of conscious- 
ness: now serious, now impish; now in open rup- 



INTRODUCTORY 15 

ture, one against three; one "personality" dressing 
smartly; one donning Quaker-like garb; and so 
forth in extraordinary alternations tragico-comic. 1 
A further example is that of a man who in 
September, 1910, was brought on a charge of theft 
before a London magistrate, who discharged him on 
the medical evidence that the man was an epileptic 
and had committed the theft while in a secondary 
state of consciousness. Perhaps these abnormal 
workings throw light on the old belief in the demon- 
possessed, the bewitched, the lycanthropes and allied 
superstitions. 

The theories broached by men of science can be 
proved or disproved by experiment and observation, 
and when, after repeated tests, the results anticipated 
by the theory are found to be unvarying, the theory 
is established. Every doubting person, given the 
chance and capacity, can verify these results for 
himself; as a rule there is acceptance, without chal- 
lenge, of what collective authority has verified. 
But in investigating the phenomena of spiritualism 
no experimental tests are forthcoming; only the 
experiential, which is a very different thing. In 
the strict sense of the term, no scientific proof is 
possible. We have to accept or reject what Spirit- 
ualists tell us, and supplement this, so far as we 
can, by observations made, as will be shown here- 
after, under difficulties not attending other branches 
of research. 

To return to the mechanism of the brain. We 

1 The Dissociation of a Personality: a Biographical Study in 
Abnormal Psychology. By Morton Prince, M.D. (1906). See also for 
a case of double personality Professor Pierre Janet's Major Symptoms 
of Hysteria (1907). 



16 THE QUESTION 

know that all the thoughts that we think and all the 
emotions that we feel are accompanied by certain 
chemical changes or molecular vibrations in the 
nerve-tissues; changes in the nerve-centres respond- 
ing to external stimuli. We know that the healthy 
working of the brain depends on the maintenance 
of its expended energy by food; that if a man 
be starved or stupefied, paralysed or palsied, the 
elaborate machinery is thrown out of gear. Recent 
research indicates that a permanence possibly 
attaches to the nerve-cells which is not shared by 
the body-cells. Unlike these, the neurons are 
adapted to last the entire life of the organism of 
which they form a part; but, once destroyed, they 
cannot be replaced. 1 What we further know is our 
ignorance. Brain and mind are interdependent, 
but we cannot apply physico-chemical processes to 
mental processes; the gulf between the two is, and, 
seemingly, will remain, impassable. All the re- 
actions and responses of our brains to our surround- 
ings are accompanied by changes in consciousness, 
but what consciousness is passes the wit of man to 
discover. Huxley puts it with his never-failing 
clearness : " If a man says that consciousness can- 
not exist, except in relation of cause and effect with 
certain molecules, I must ask how he knows that; 
and if he says that it can, I must put the same 
question." 2 That is the impregnable position of 
biological science as defined by one of its greatest 
expositors. " Soul is known to us only in a brain, 

1 " Nature and Nurture in Mental Development." By F. W. Mott, 
F.R.S. Science Progress, October, 1913, p. 306. 

2 Collected Essays. Vol. ix., p. 141. 



INTRODUCTORY 17 

but the special note of soul is that it is capable of 
existing without a brain, or after death." x That 
is the unverifiable assumption of theology. And 
when a reviewer of Raymond in Nature, which may, 
perhaps, be regarded as the representative scientific 
journal in this country, says that " Life is not a 
form of energy," that " it guides and directs energy, 
but there is no sound reason to believe that it goes 
out of existence when it ceases to manifest through 
a particular body," 2 he expresses only a personal 
" pious opinion." 

In a review of the same book, Sir Conan Doyle, 
allowing rhetorical eulogy to take the place of sober 
assessment of a momentous theme, affirms that the 
record therein is a " new revelation of God's dealings 
with man which must modify some ill-defined and 
melancholy dogmas as to the events which follow 
the death of the body." 3 In what degree the con- 
tents of Raymond justify this remarkable claim on 
its behalf to be an inspired supplement to, or 
supersession of, an old revelation will be more fully 
considered later on. Does the " new revelation " 
" modify " dogmas about the soul's destiny, or, 
changing the terms, only reaffirm them? Will it 
add a hitherto undreamt-of significance to the 
words: "Many prophets and righteous men have 
desired to see those things which ye see, and have 
not seen them; and to hear those things which 
ye hear, and have not heard them." 4 We shall 
see. 

1 Modem Theories in Philosophy and Religion, p. 328. By Principal 
Tulloch. 

2 Nature, 14th December, 1916. 

8 Observer, 25th November, 1916. * Matthew xiii. 17. 



18 THE QUESTION 

At the outset of the inquiry, a hearing must be 
accorded to what the anthropologist has to say on 
the pedigree of Spiritualism. We shall learn from 
him that this pedigree stretches into a dim and 
dateless past, reaching to the animistic stage in the 
evolution of religion: a stage when men conceived 
of spirits indwelling in everything, and when, as 
world-wide evidence shows, largely through the 
experience of dreams, shadows and reflections of 
himself and suchlike bewildering phenomena, there 
dawned upon him the sense of personality — an alter 
ego — something apart from the body. On such a 
plane are the natives of Australia, who stand at the 
bottom level of culture. One of the Kurnai tribe 
told Mr. Howitt that his yambo, or spirit, could 
leave the body. " It must be so," he said, " for 
when I sleep I go to far away places; I see distinct 
people, I even see and speak with those who are 
dead." x Hence, in the lower culture, the wide- 
spread avoidance of waking a sleeper, because his 
soul may be absent; and the European folk-custom 
of not turning a sleeper over lest the absent soul 
should miss the way back. To the savage dreams 
are true, not only " while they last," but long 
afterwards. They link the lowest minds with the 
highest; the Australian with the great Roman poet 
Lucretius when he speaks of that which " scares 
us, when buried in sleep, so that we seem to see and 
hear face to face those who are dead and gone, whose 
bones the earth holds in its embrace." 2 

Both savage and spiritualist are one in belief in 

1 Journal Anthrop. Institute. Vol. xiii., p. 189. 

2 De Berum Natura. Book I., pp. 133-135. 



INTRODUCTORY 19 

the survival and return of the soul, and in their 
vague conception of its nature. 

In wellnigh every language, both barbaric and 
civilised, the word for " spirit " and " breath " is 
the same. Yahweh (Jehovah) breathed into 
Adam's " nostrils the breath of life, and man be- 
came a living soul " * ; and in barbaric belief the 
soul of the dying man departs through his nostrils. 
It is by his breath that the medicine-man among the 
tribes of the north-west Amazons works his cures; 
" sometimes he will breathe on his own hand and 
then massage the affected part." 2 The association 
between breath and spiritual transfer has examples 
in Jesus breathing upon the disciples when impart- 
ing to them the Holy Ghost, and in the conferring 
of supernatural grace in the rites and ceremonies 
of the Roman Catholic Church. When an ancient 
Roman lay at the point of death, his nearest relative 
inhaled the last breath to ensure the continuance of 
the spirit, while the same reason prompted the act 
of a dying Lancashire witch, a friend receiving her 
last breath, and with it, as was verily believed, her 
familiar spirit. " That they sucked-in the last 
breath of their expiring friends was surely a practice 
of no medical institution, but a loose opinion that 
the soul passed out that way, and a fondness of 
affection, from some Pythagorical foundation, that 
the spirit of one body passed into another which they 
wished might be their own." 3 

Emanuel Swedenborg, to whom, as will be shown, 

1 Genesis ii. 7. 

2 T. Whiffen, N. W. Amazons, p. 180. 

3 Sir Thomas Browne, " Hydriotaphia " (Works, Vol. iii., p. 130. 
1907 edition.) 



20 THE QUESTION 

the more recent developments of Spiritualism are 
traceable, elaborated a theory of breathing, the 
different modes of which he correlated with spirit- 
breathing. " Inward thoughts have inward breaths, 
and purer spiritual thoughts have spiritual breaths 
hardly mixed with material " . . . hence " the 
varying species of respiration produce for their 
subject divers introductions to the spiritual and 
angelic powers with whom the lungs conspire/" 1 
Long before his time the early Hindus had formu- 
lated a theory of connection between the physical 
and the psychical in breathing, the reduction in the 
frequency of which induced or aided meditative 
calm, and the fakirs and yogi ascetics of to-day 
regulate their breathing even to cultivation of its 
suspension so that the spirit may obtain mastery 
over the flesh. In line with this is a statement by 
Dr. Hare, in his Experimental Investigation of the 
Spirit Manifestations, demonstrating the Existence 
of Spirits and their Communion with Mortals, 
that he was informed by the spirits that " they differ 
from one another in density and that they have a 
fluid circulating through an arterial and venous 
system which is subject to a respiratory process." 2 
The conception of the soul as ethereal is universal: 
herein do savages and spiritualists think as one. 
The only differences are in the degrees of tenuity of 
vaporousness. In Tongan belief the soul is the 
aeriform part of the body, related to it as the per- 
fume to the flower; the Greenlanders describe it as 
pale and soft, fleshless and boneless; the Congo 

1 Emanuel Swederiborg, p. 78. By Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson. 

2 Quoted in Mr. F. Podmore's Studies in Psychical Research, p. 37. 



INTRODUCTORY 21 

negroes leave the hut of the dead unswept for a 
year, lest the dust should injure the delicate sub- 
stance of the ghost; the German peasants avoid 
slamming a door lest a soul gets pinched in it; and 
both French and English rustics open a door or 
window that the departing soul may have free egress. 
The natives of Melanesia say that it is grey, like 
dust, vanishing as soon as looked at; the Caribs that 
it is subtle and thin, and the Nicaraguans that it is 
like the air passing in and out through the mouth 
and nostrils. Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and the 
early Fathers of the Church alike conceived of it as 
of thin, impalpable nature; in the Arabian romance 
of Yokdhan the hero discovers in one of the heart's 
cavities a bluish vapour, which was a man's soul. 
In The Report on the Census on Hallucinations, 
taken by the authority of the Society for Psychical 
Research, a " Mr. P." affirms that as his boy lay 
dying, he saw a blue flame in the air. " It hovered 
above me," he says, " for a few seconds ... a few 
minutes later the child died." 1 

" And the souls mounting up to God 
Went by her like thin flames," 

sings Rossetti in The Blessed Damozel. In his Third 
Book, wherein are marshalled more than twenty 
arguments against immortality, Lucretius says : " I 
have shown the soul to be fine and to be formed 
of minute bodies and made up of much smaller first 
beginnings than is the liquid of water or mist or 
smoke." 2 Hampole, in his Ayenbite of Inwyt 
(i.e. the again-biting of the inner wit, or the Prick of 

1 Proceedings, August, 1894, p. 126. 

2 Book III., pp. 425-428. 



22 THE QUESTION 

Conscience), a poem of the fourteenth century, 
speaks of the more intense suffering which the 
soul undergoes by reason of its delicate nature: 

" The soul is more tendre and nesche (soft) 
Than the bodi that hath bones and fleysche." *■ 

Montaigne cites a number of classic authors on 
the " soule in generalle," all of them conceiving 
that it is, as to the Chaldeans, " a vertue without 
any determinate forme." 2 Descartes can get no 
further: "What the soul itself was I either did not 
stay to consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was 
something extremely rare and subtle, like mind or 
flame or ether, spread through my grosser parts." 3 
( " Observing that the pineal gland is the only part 
of the brain that is single, Descartes was determined 
by this to make that gland the soul's habitation.") 4 
" Men," says Hobbes, " could not fall upon any 
other conceipt but that the soule was of the same 
substance with that which appeareth in a Dream to 
one that sleepeth or in a Looking-glasse to one that 
is awake." 5 

In a wellnigh forgotten book, The Unseen Uni- 
verse or Physical Speculations on a Future State, 
published anonymously in 1875, and afterwards 
acknowledged as the joint work of two eminent 
physicists, the late Professors Balfour Stewart and 
P. G. Tait, it was argued that while the effect of a 
portion of our mental activity is to leave a perma- 
nent record on the brain-cells, thus constituting " a 

1 Reprint in Early English Text Society. Ed. Dr. R. Morris. 

8 Essays. Book II., chapter xii. 

8 Meditationes de primd Philosophic!. Vol. ii., p. 10. 

* Reid, Philos. of the Intellectual Powers. Vol. ii., chapter iv., p. 99. 

6 Leviathan. Part I., chapter xii., " Of Man." 



INTRODUCTORY 23 

material organ of memory," the effect of the remain- 
ing portion is to set up thought-waves across the ether 
and to construct by these means, in some part of the 
unseen universe, our spiritual body. 1 How the vibra- 
tions transmitted by the ethereal medium into that 
universe could be located so as to avoid collision 
between the vibrations emanating from each indi- 
vidual brain the authors did not make clear. Cast 
in the same primitive mould, their theory antici- 
pated that of the Rev. Adin Ballon's subtle ethero- 
spiritual substance which he calls " spiricity," 2 
and, more definitely, Dr. Ashburnam's theory that 
a train of thought is composed of globules which 
can be seen by clairvoyants streaming visibly from 
the brain. 3 Sergeant Cox, a master in the Spiritual- 
istic Israel, was convinced that the substance of the 
soul " is vastly more refined than the thinnest gas 
or the vapour of a comet's tail " 4 ; Sir Oliver Lodge 
approvingly quotes the late F. W. H. Myers' 
" surmise " that " personality has a kind of semi- 
bodily existence ; a sort of ethereal, or, as some would 
say, spiritual body still in fact subsisting." 5 Again, 
in Raymond,, " We change our state at death and 
enter a region of — what? Of ether, I think." 6 
With the vagueness which infuses all deliverances on 
this subject, Mr. J. A. Hill says: " As to the nature 

1 " The motions which accompany thought must also affect the 
invisible order of things, while the forces which cause these motions are 
likewise derived from the same region, and thus it follows that thought 
conceived to affect the matter of another universe simultaneously with 
this may explain a future state." — The Unseen Universe, p. 199. 
(Fourth edition.) 

2 Podmore, Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 302. 

3 Ibid. Vol. ii., p. 16. 

4 Ibid. Vol. ii., p. 174. 

6 Quarterly Review, July, 1903, p. 226. 6 P. 298. 



24 THE QUESTION 

of the after-life . . . some great differences there 
must be, for our shedding of the sensory organs 
must presumably bring about considerable change in 
the mode and context of our perceptions, and conse- 
quently no very clearly comprehensible descriptions 
can come through." 1 A medium whom Mr. Hill 
consults " gets at the length of time that has 
elapsed since death partly by a direct impression or 
intuition, and partly by the solidity or thinness of 
the form." 2 Orthodoxy, not always in accord with 
Spiritualism, greets it in the person of the Rev. 
Professor Henslow, who, in his Present-day Ration- 
alism Critically Examined, suggests that " ether is 
the basis of the soul," while an American writer, Mr. 
Henry Frank, in his Modern Light on Immortality, 
asserts that " invisible bioplasm or vital substance 
exists in every minute portion of the body, and that 
could the body-shell be removed we should have 
a phosphorescent duplicate of ourselves." In all 
this we are as the farmer with his claret : we " don't 
seem to get no forrader." 

The discarnate soul is not envisaged as amorphous ; 
it is a replica of the body, appearing to believers in 
the " new revelation " in no " questionable shape." 
" Man's spirit," says Swedenborg, " is his mind, 
which lives after death in complete human form." 3 
Complete or mutilated, in barbaric ideas, according 
to its having been unharmed or injured during its 
earthly career. The Australian natives cut off the 
thumb of a slain foe so that he cannot throw the 

1 Nineteenth Century, January, 1917, p. 118. 

2 Psychical Investigations, p. 67. 

8 Quoted in Tyler's Primitive Culture. Vol. i., p. 450. 



INTRODUCTORY 25 

shadow spear in the land of shadows. In Nica- 
raguan belief, when a man dies there comes out 
of his mouth something resembling a person. On 
Greek vases the soul is depicted as issuing from the 
mouth in the form of a homunculus, and that Chris- 
tian art falls into line with this conception is seen in 
the frescoes on the walls of the Campo Santo at 
Pisa, where the soul is portrayed as a sexless child 
emerging from the mouth of a corpse. In an elabo- 
rately sculptured monument over the tomb of Bishop 
Giles de Bridport in the east transept of Salisbury 
Cathedral the soul is represented as a naked figure 
being carried by an angel to heaven. 

Among the Nias Islanders of the Indian Archi- 
pelago souls are weighed out for those who are yet 
to be born: the child in the womb is asked by the 
god Balin if he will choose a heavy or light soul 
— that is, a long life or a short life, and a natural or 
a violent death. The maximum weight allotted is 
about ten grammes. Elsewhere, the soul is found to 
weigh a little more. 1 One Dr. Duncan McDougall, 
of Boston, U.S.A. (all sensational discoveries honour 
America as their birthplace), reported, as the result 
of weighing several bodies at the very moment of 
death, having found that in each case there was a 
loss of weight of from half-an-ounce to an ounce. 
The very second of death was determined by the 
instant dropping of the opposite scale. This, with 
an ingenuity creditable to his imagination, but not 
to any sense of humour, he assumed represented the 
loss through the departure of the soul. He adds 
that there was always a loss of weight in human 

1 A. E. Crawley, Idea of the Soul, p. 122. 



26 THE QUESTION 

beings, but the result in each case when a dog's 
corpse was placed in scales balanced to a fraction of 
an ounce was that the weight remained exactly the 
same. 1 This seems to tell against the belief in the 
immortality of animals which is held by some 
spiritualists. But they can take comfort in the 
evidence — quantum valeat — adduced by Raymond 
Lodge's little Indian girl " control," Feda. Speak- 
ing through the medium, Mrs. Leonard, she says: 
" He has brought that doggie again, nice doggie. 
A doggie that goes like this and twists about (Feda 
indicating a wriggle)." 2 Apparently accepting 
Dr. Duncan McDougall's conclusions, Mr. Edward 
Carpenter remarks that " it would be satisfactory 
to know how far modern observation of a normal 
soul-weight corresponds with ancient speculation in 
the matter." 3 His reference, of course, is to the 
ancient Egyptian idea of the weighing of the heart 
or soul after death in the Hall of the Two Goddesses 
of Truth before the deceased could enter the kingdom 
of Osiris. A reference to possible experiments on 
soul-weight in ancient Rome occurs in the Third 
Book of Lucretius: " So soon as the deep rest of 
death hath fallen upon a man, and the mind and life 
have departed, you can perceive then no diminution 
of the whole body either in appearance or weight: 
death makes all good save the vital sense and heat." i 
Mutatis mutandis; the doctrine of continuity applied 
to theories of a spirit-world is further " justified of 

1 Daily Telegraph, 12th March, 1907. The full report appears to be 
given in the Annals of the American Society for Psychical Research, 
June, 1907. 

2 Raymond, p. 203. 

8 Drama of Love and Death, p. 185. 4 Book III., 211-215. 



INTRODUCTORY 27 

its children." The unbroken connection between the 
old and the new animism has examples in fairydom 
and devildom. Concerning the former, we learn, 
on the authority of the Rev. Robert Kirk's Secret 
Commonwealth of Elves,, Fauns and Fairies, pub- 
lished in 1691, that the fairies, as the philosophers 
tell us of matter, exist in various " states." Some 
are of the nature of " condensed cloud or of con- 
gealed air " ; others have " bodies or vehicles spun- 
gious, thin and defecat," while the rest are of 
grosser texture. They " speak but little and that 
by way of whistling." 1 So with the denizens of 
ghostland in their squealing and twittering, both in 
Homer's underworld and the Hebrew sheol. In 
the Iliad it is told how " like a vapour the spirit 
was gone beneath the earth with a faint shriek." 2 
" The souls of Penelope's Paramours conducted by 
Mercury chirped like bats, and those which followed 
Hercules made a noise, but like a flock of birds." 3 
Isaiah writes of the " familiar spirit out of the 
ground whose speech shall whisper out of the dust." * 
When Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, urges him not to 
leave the palace because of " horrid sights seen by 
the watch," she says: 

"The graves have yawn'd and yielded up their dead, 
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets," 

and in Hamlet, Horatio, referring to the murder of 
Caesar, says: 

1 P. 6. 1893 (reprint in Bibliotheque de Carabas). 

2 Book XXIII., p. 100. 

3 Sir Thomas Browne, Works. Vol. iii., p. 132 (1907 edition). 

4 Chapter XXIX., 4. 

6 Julius Ccesar, Act II., sc. 2. 



28 THE QUESTION 

" A little ere the mightiest Julius fell 
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman street." * 

The Solomon Islanders compare the voice of the 
soul to a whisper; in the weird cries of the loris and 
the lemur the Malagasy natives hear the wailing of 
the lemur es; the unquiet spirits of their ancestors, 
and to the ears of the Algonquin Indians the 
shadow-souls of the dead chirped like crickets. In 
the case of the famous Epworth Rectory ghost, 
when the Rev. Samuel Wesley tried to get into con- 
versation with it, he says that he received in response 
" only once or twice two or three very feeble squeaks, 
a little louder than the chirping of a bird." How- 
ever, when the family prayers were offered up for 
the House of Hanover, the Jacobite poltergeist 
knocked loudly in protest! 

The exponents of modern Spiritualism give no 
clear lead in the matter of demonology and witch- 
craft. There appears to be only occasional place 
in its scheme for Satan and his gang of demons who 
are alleged to possess the bodies of human beings 
and animals, notably among these latter, according 
to the sacred record, swine. 3 The existence of evil 
spirits is conveniently assumed by apologists as 
abetting mediums in frauds; "and no marvel, for 
Satan himself is transformed into an angel of 
light." 4 (See infra, p. 182.) Certainly there is no 
place therein for witches, with their Sabbath orgies, 
black masses, nocturnal rides on broomsticks, and 

1 Act I., sc. i. 

2 Lat., lemur = a ghost, from their stealthy movements and plaintive 
cries. 

8 Luke viii. 32, 33. 
* 2 Cor. xi. 14. 



INTRODUCTORY 29 

transformation of old crones into cats and hares. 
Yielding to " the form and pressure of the time," 
the places in the occult that knew them once know 
them no more. The house, empty, swept, and 
garnished, is filled with seven other occupants, 
bearing other names. 

Timely is the warning given by Professor Gilbert 
Murray that " the great thing to remember is that 
the mind of man cannot be enlightened permanently 
by merely teaching him to reject some particular 
set of superstitions. There is an infinite supply of 
other superstitions always at hand, and the mind 
that desires such things — that is, the mind that has 
not trained itself to the hard discipline of reason- 
ableness and honesty — will, as soon as its devils are 
cast out, proceed to fill itself with their relations." x 

The physical phenomena of earlier and, presum- 
ably, more ignorant times as to the nature and be- 
haviour of the occult have given place in large 
degree to psychical phenomena; to the clairvoy- 
ants and to the trance-utterances of mediums. The 
quasi-physical, as we may perhaps define materialised 
spirit-forms, are now little, if at all, in evidence, nor 
does belief in the genuineness of the photographs of 
these diaphanous ansemics now obtain credence 
save from the very few who follow Mr. Edward 
Carpenter in regarding that genuineness as " beyond 
question." 2 But, physical or psychical, " the trail 
of the serpent " is over it all. 

1 Four Stages of Greek Religion, p. 111. 

2 The Drama of Love and Death, p. 186. 



PART II 

PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF 
SPIRITUALISM 



HISTORICAL 



" Write me down in a book and send me the life and adventures, 
the tricks and frauds, of the impostor Alexander Abonoteichos." — 
Lucian : " Alexander the Oracle Monger." 

" Create a belief in the theory, and the facts will create them- 
selves." — Joseph Jastrow: "Fact and Fable in Psychology." 

THE phenomena of Modern Spiritualism are 
twofold: physical and psychical. They are 
more or less intermingled in the poltergeist x 
and clairvoyant, and in outlining the history of the 
movement the actions of the one cannot be under- 
stood without those of the other. 

The following is a convenient classification. 



B. Psychical 

Trance States. 

Example, Swedenborg. 
Clairvoyancy. 
Crystal-gazing. 

Telepathy and Hallucinations. 
Trance Mediums. 

Examples, Mrs. Piper, Mrs. 
Leonard (in Raymond). 
Cross Correspondence. 

Example, Mrs. Verrall. 
Theosophy. 

Example, Madame Blavatsky. 
Christian Science. 

Example, Mrs. Eddy. 

Modern Spiritualism had its origin in a very 
humble way seventy years ago in America, land of 

1 A noisy spirit. German f., polter, noise, uproar; and geist, ghost. 

33 



A. Physical 

Raps, Table-turning, etc. 

Examples, Fox, Phelps. 
Levitation, etc. 

Example, Home. 
Slate-writing, etc. 

Example, Slade. 
Miscellaneous. 

Examples, Stainton Moses, Eu- 
sapia Palladino. 
Materialisation of Spirits. 
Photographs of Spirits. 
Ghosts and Haunted Houses. 



34 THE QUESTION 

"many inventions." A generation earlier the seed 
whence the movement sprang had been sporadically 
planted in the receptive soil from which Shakers 
and Universalists gathered a more fruitful crop 
than could be reaped in England: a soil which 
nourished Mormons, Second Adventists, Perfection- 
ists of Oneida Creek, Brotherhoods of the New Life, 
and communities of the type of Brook Farm, with 
their dreams of a new heaven and a new earth. 
From the same generous soil sprang, in these later 
days, the Revivalists, Moody and Sankey, the 
Prophet Dowie, and the Christian Scientist, Mrs. 
Mary Baker Eddy. The Revivalists, after stirring 
up the emotions of their fellow-countrymen and 
leaving them to simmer, have periodically shown 
solicitude for the unconverted in this and other 
lands, striving to awaken sinners by rousing services 
blended of song and sensation, only, in many cases, 
to have begotten hysterical extravagances, making 
the last state of the " converted " worse than their 
first. It is also to America that spiritualists here 
are indebted for a ceaseless stream of mediums 
since the arrival of the first, a Mrs. Hayden, in 1852. 
Boston remains the chief market of world-supply. 
In a relatively new civilisation there is freedom 
from the trammels of conventions which repress the 
individual and which bar the intrusion of disturbing 
elements bringing new ideas in their train. And 
there is a mentality among the American people 
which makes them peculiarly responsive to whatever 
is novel and appeals to the imagination. This may 
be less marked at the present time when so large an 
alien element is being infused, but it was active at 



HISTORICAL 35 

the time when Spiritualism and allied movements 
" caught on." 

In March, 1848, the household of a farmer named 
Fox, who with his wife and their two young 
daughters, Margaret and Katie, lived in a one- 
storied log house at Hydeville, in the State of New 
York, was disturbed at night by knockings and like 
uncanny noises, the louder of which came from the 
girls' bed. Soon after, these were repeated, sound 
for sound, being answered by raps at certain letters 
in response to Katie Fox snapping her fingers. 
The letters, when taken down in writing, made up 
connected words and sentences. The father and 
mother, who were devout Methodists, believed that 
these messages were due to spirits. Neighbours 
were called in, one of whom, apparently an expert 
in the rapping-alphabet, learned from the answers 
that these came from the spirit of a pedlar who had 
been murdered in the house and buried in the cellar, 
which was then under water. The spirit went on to 
describe the murder in detail. The news spread: 
crowds of people were drawn to the spot, and, so goes 
the story as told later on, when the cellar was dry, 
diggings revealed, some feet down, a few teeth, 
bones and hair, all presumably human. Soon after 
this sensational discovery Margaret Fox went to 
Rochester, New York, to stay with her married 
sister, and Kate went on a visit to friends in 
Auburn, a town near by. In both places the raps 
went on more vigorously than at Hydeville; the 
married sister and the friends at Auburn became 
sharers in spiritual gifts ; rappings were the order of 
the day, or, rather, of the night, since all the spirits 



36 THE QUESTION 

" love darkness rather than light " x — to complete the 
quotation would be to anticipate. (Of Katie Fox 
Mr. A. P. Sinnett says: " She was so remarkable a 
medium for the rapping manifestation that often 
when she entered the house where I was staying 
raps would flutter all over the house in broad day- 
light." 2 ) A year later a correspondent of The 
Spiritual World estimated " that there were a 
hundred mediums in New York City, and fifty or 
sixty ' private circles ' are reported in Philadel- 
phia." 3 It was estimated that in seven years the 
number of believers in spiritualism in America 
had reached two millions, a number now largely 
exceeded. 

Copying a custom of the Methodists, American 
spiritualists hold annually big " camp meetings," 
whither crowds flock from all parts. The chief re- 
sort is Lily Dale, where a large hotel is crammed, 
and the cottages are rented by mediums of all sorts: 
slate-writers, sealed-letter readers, spirit photog- 
raphers, and a motley lot of " camp-followers " in 
the shape of astrologers, palmists, and fortune- 
tellers. 

It may here be well to explain what is meant by 
a spiritualist " circle." 

First, " Picture to yourself a little chamber into 
which no very brilliant light was admitted, with a 
crowd of people from all quarters, excited, carefully 
worked-up, all a-flutter with expectation." These 
words are eighteen hundred years old; in them 

1 John iii. 19. 

s " Dr. Crozier and Spiritualism." Fortnightly Review, May, 1917, 
p. 865. 

8 Podmore's Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 183. 



HISTORICAL 37 

Lucian, immortal satirist, describes how the medium, 
Alexander of Abonoteichos, arranged the properties 
for a seance. 

Writing under the disguise of " M.A.Oxon," a 
prominent medium, the late Rev. Stainton Moses, 
issued a leaflet of Advice to Inquirers on the 
Conduct of Circles, from which these instructions are 
quoted: "When you think the time has come, let 
someone take command of the circle and act as 
spokesman. Explain to the unseen Intelligence 
that an agreed code of signals is desirable and ask 
that a tilt may be given [i.e. to the table round 
which the circle sits " in subdued light " as the 
alphabet is slowly repeated at the several letters 
which form the word that the Intelligence wishes to 
spell. It is convenient to use a single tilt for ' No,' 
three for ' Yes,' and two tilts to express doubt or 
uncertainty. [A most ancient code : see infra, p. 83.] 

" After this, ask who the Intelligence purports to 
be, which of the company is the medium and such 
relevant questions. 

" The signals may take the form of raps. If so, 
use the same code of signals and ask, as the raps 
become clear, that they may be made on the table, 
or in a part of the room where they are demon- 
strably not produced by any natural means, but 
avoid any vexatious imposition of restrictions on 
free communication. Let the Intelligence use its 
own means. It rests greatly with the sitters to 
make the manifestations elevating or frivolous and 
even tricky." " M.A.Oxon " concludes with this 
counsel: "Try the results you get by the light of 
Reason. Do not enter into a very solemn investi- 



38 THE QUESTION 

gation in a spirit of idle curiosity or frivolity. You 
will be repaid if you gain only a well-grounded con- 
viction that there is a life after death." 

Concerning the " subdued light," it is interesting 
to note that Reginald Scot, in the chapter on 
" Magical Circles " in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, 
published in 1584, says that " as for the places for 
these, they are to be chosen melancholy, doleful, 
dark and lonely ... or else in some large parlour 
hung with black." 1 

The Hydeville story is the forerunner of a suc- 
cession of records of mysterious phenomena of the 
poltergeist type, whose variety in detail warrants 
reference to some happenings in the household of 
a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Phelps, of Stratford, 
Connecticut. In March, 1850, there began and con- 
tinued for a year and a half a series of disturbances 
which showed a blend of sprite-like and transcen- 
dental elements in the spirits who were credited as 
the cause. There were visions of figures of angelic 
beauty, varied by high kicks of the furniture. 
According to the narrative supplied later on by 
persons who were not eye-witnesses, in one of the 
rooms eleven lovely women, with Bibles in front of 
them, were kneeling in seraphic joy, their fingers 
pointing to verses apparently relating to the strange 
occurrences. At another time the windows were 
smashed; objects were thrown by invisible hands; 
brickbats started from mirrors and fell on the floor; 
turnips covered with hieroglyphs grew out of the 
pattern under the carpet; shovel and tongs moved 
to the middle of the parlour and waltzed; the big 

*P. 472 (1886, reprint). 



HISTORICAL 39 

table rose two feet in the air; letters, written by no 
human hands, were wafted down, and from the 
viewless air a large potato dropped near the reverend 
master as he sat at breakfast. At dinner the spoons 
and forks flew up out of the dishes ; and a turnip fol- 
lowed the example of the potato. These pranks 
recall the old nursery rhyme: 

"Hey diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle; 
The cow jumped over the moon; 
The little dog laughed to see such sport, 
And the dish ran after the spoon." 

Nor were the children exempted from this horse- 
play. Invisible powers carried the elder boy 
across the room and cut .his trousers into strips; 
at another time a lamp on the mantelpiece in 
his bedroom moved from its place and set fire 
to some papers on his bed; while his sleeping 
sister was nearly smothered by a pillow drawn 
over her face, and nearly strangled by a tape 
tied round her neck. As for the raps, they pur- 
ported to come from a spirit who had been a lawyer's 
clerk, and who said that he was in hell because he 
had cheated Dr. Phelps's wife in drawing up her 
marriage settlement! 

The excitement created by the Stratford pheno- 
mena brought thither one Andrew Jackson Davis 
by name, son of a shoemaker, for not " many wise 
men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many 
noble are called " to such great services. Three 
years before the Fox rappings he had exhibited 
power as a clairvoyant and faith-healer. Fame 
came to him early because he had been singularly 
privileged by the spirits of Galen and Swedenborg 



40 THE QUESTION 

appearing to him while in a trance, and instructing 
him concerning his beneficent mission to mankind. 
Davis gave as his judgment that vital electricity in 
the boy's organism accounted for the raps, and that 
the spirits controlled the movements causing the 
general disturbances. The hieroglyphs on the 
turnips he interpreted as this message from the 
spirit-world: "A high society of angels desire 
through the agency of another and a more inferior 
society to communicate in various ways to the 
earth's inhabitants." x 

Returning to the circles: music, the sensuous, and 
low comedy contributed to their " variety " show. 
The medium whom raps from the Intelligence had 
made known was his chosen vehicle, acting under 
the essential condition of " subdued light," filled the 
air with perfumes, music was wafted from shut 
pianos, from concertinas held in one hand, and 
rung from bells unpulled. Flowers and fruits were 
strewn among the circle; and, less agreeable, if 
more satisfying, live eels and lobsters, pots of jam 
and rolls of lard, supplied a special menu. For 
further entertainment tables were turned or tilted, 
and other articles of furniture moved, either visibly, 
or more often, in the dark, or in such a way that 
only results were seen. 

Shortly after her arrival in this country Mrs. 
Hayden was followed by another medium, Mrs. 
Roberts, and rappings and table-turnings became 
epidemic. For a minimum fee of half-a-guinea the 
raps could be heard and the turning table felt. 
There was no lack of visitors to the seances. Later 

1 Podmore: Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 197. 



HISTORICAL 41 

revelations made known the fate of the departed. 
As an example of this a Rev. Mr. Gillson, of Bath, 
in a work entitled Table -Talking: Disclosures of 
Satanic Wonders and Prophetic Signs, reports that 
after ascertaining that his interlocutor was a de- 
parted spirit, who expected in the course of ten 
years to be bound with Satan and all his crew and 
cast into the abyss, catechised him as follows: — 

" I then asked: ' Where are Satan's headquarters? 
Are they in England? ' There was a slight move- 
ment. 

" ' Are they in France? ' A violent movement. 

" ' Are they in Spain? ' Similar agitation. 
'Are they in Rome?' The table seemed liter- 
ally frantic." 1 

To turn to another and more important chapter 
in the book of the "new revelation": 1855 brought 
to these shores a man famous in the annals of 
Spiritualism. " In David Dunglas Home," or 
Hume, Mr. Podmore says, " and in his doings, all 
the problems of Spiritualism are posed in their 
acutest form: with the marvels wrought by him or 
through him, the main defences of Spiritualism 
must stand or fall." 2 

Home, of Scottish birth and name, was taken, in 
1842, when he was nine years old, by relatives to 
America. In his seventeenth year — two years after 
the Hydeville knockings, about which he may have 
heard — he came out as a medium, finding support 
in that profession from a group of spiritualists. 
They subscribed money to send him to England to 

1 Podmore : Modem Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 14. 
*Ibid. Vol. ii., p. 222. 



42 THE QUESTION 

recruit his energies and also to advance the cause. 
His credentials secured him welcome both in 
spiritualist circles and the houses of prominent 
people. From England he went abroad, finally 
reaching Russia, where he exhibited his powers 
before the Tsar. He returned in the autumn of 
1859, bringing with him a Russian lady of noble 
birth and moderate fortune, whom he had married. 
Three years afterwards she died; Home was left 
" hard up " and lived by his wits till 1866, when he 
made the acquaintance of Mrs. Lyon, a widow lady, 
wealthy and childless. There was a singular charm 
about him, felt by all who met him, and it was this 
which won her heart and opened her purse strings. 
She voluntarily — at least he was not proved to have 
used undue influence upon her — gave him the hand- 
some sum of ,£24,000, and promised more. In 
recognition of her generosity he double-barrelled 
his name as Home-Lyon. But soon afterwards 
the lady cooled and repented, and brought an action 
for restitution of the money, which she won, the 
court at the same time acquitting Home of what 
looked like unworthy behaviour. In 1871 he 
remarried, and again a Russian lady of fortune. 
After this he spent the greater part of each year on 
the Continent till his death in 1886. He is described 
as a man whose nerves were highly strung, lavish in 
love of his friends and of cheerful disposition, but 
vain to a degree, ever striving to be before the foot- 
lights. His skill as a pianist and his dramatic power 
as a reciter added to his social attractions. Trust in 
him was deepened by the impression of his belief in 
himself as possessed of supernormal powers which he 



HISTORICAL 43 

made on others, as well as by his orthodox attitude. 
In his trances he " habitually delivered discourses on 
religious themes and on communion with God and 
the angels." Mr. Podmore says that Home was 
never publicly exposed as an impostor, and there is 
no evidence of any weight that he was ever privately 
detected in trickery. 1 But, as will be seen later on, 
he always chose his own company or imposed his 
own conditions. Such, in brief outline, was the 
man. Now for his performances. 

After the stock phenomena of raps, tilting tables, 
music from apparently untouched accordions and 
guitars, spirit voices and spirit lights, all in the usual 
"dim," if not " religious, light," Home would open 
the second act. I borrow Mr. Podmore's description : 

"If the conditions were judged favourable to the 
higher manifestations, the lights would be turned 
out, the fire screened and the table drawn up to the 
window, the company sitting round three sides, 
leaving the side next the window vacant, with 
Home sitting at one end of the vacant space. 
Hands would then be seen, outlined against the 
faint light proceeding from the window, to rise over 
the vacant edge of the table, move about the paper 
lying on its surface or give flowers to the sitters. 
Afterwards the medium would be levitated." 2 

To Pope's question, " Shall gravitation cease if 
you go by?" 3 America had given an affirmative 
answer before Home levitated. In 1851 a medium 
named Gordon was carried through the air a distance 
of sixty feet, " entirely by spiritual hands." More 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 230. 

2 Ibid. Vol. i., p. 232. 

8 Essay on Man. Ep. IV. i. 128. 



44 THE QUESTION 

famous in the annals of this phenomenon is the case 
of Mrs. Guppy, a very heavy weight. At a seance 
at which, after recitation of the Lord's Prayer and 
sacred tunes from a musical box, the materialised 
spirit of Katie King appeared, one of the sitters 
said: " I wish she would bring Mrs. Guppy here "; 
whereupon a heavy bump on the table was heard, 
and on a match being lighted Mrs. Guppy was seen 
standing on the table, holding a housekeeping book, 
in which the last written item was " onions." She 
had been transported from her house in Highbury, 
three miles away. Her companion at home had 
last seen her making up her accounts; she suddenly 
disappeared, and the only trace she left was that of 
a slight haze near the ceiling. Her husband, with 
the coolness of the " well-conducted " Charlotte 
Werther, 1 remarked that no doubt she had been 
wafted away by the spirits and went to his supper. 
About the same time supernormal agencies carried 
" Dr." Monck, a professional medium, through the 
air from Bristol to Swindon. Later on, terrestrial 
agencies carried him to prison as a rogue and a 
vagabond. 

To return to Home. The most graphic account 
of one of his earlier levitations was from the pen of 
Kobert Bell, a prominent journalist of the time, and 
was published in The Cornhill Magazine of August, 
1860. The article was entitled " Stranger than 
Fiction." To quote its essential parts: he describes 

1 " Charlotte, having seen his body 
Borne before her on a shutter, 
Like a well-conducted person, 
Went on cutting bread and butter." 

Thackekay: Sorrows of Werther. 



HISTORICAL 45 

the seance as taking place in a room in which all the 
lights had been put out, darkness being further en- 
sured by the pulling down of the window blind by an 
invisible hand. The sitters felt their knees touched 
and their clothes pulled, also by invisible hands ; soft 
music was heard from an accordion, and presently 
Home, who " was seated next the window, his head 
being dimly visible against the curtain, said in a quiet 
voice, ' My chair is moving — I am off the ground — 
don't notice me — talk of something else,' or words 
to that effect. ... I was sitting," Mr. Bell adds, 
" nearly opposite to him and I saw his hands dis- 
appear from the table, and his head vanish into the 
deep shadow beyond. In a moment or two he 
spoke again. This time his voice was in the air 
above our heads. He had risen from his chair to a 
height of four or five feet from the ground. As he 
ascended higher he described his position, which at 
first was perpendicular, and afterwards became 
horizontal. . . . In a moment or two more he told 
us that he was going to pass across the window, 
against the grey silvery light of which he would be 
visible. We watched in profound silence, and saw 
his figure pass from one side of the window to the 
other, feet foremost, lying horizontally in the air. 
He spoke to us as he passed, and told us that he 
would return the reverse way and recross the 
window, which he did. . . . He hovered round the 
circle for several minutes and passed, this time 
perpendicularly, over our heads. I heard his voice 
behind me in the air and felt something lightly 
brush my chair. It was his foot, which he gave us 
leave to touch. I placed my hand gently upon it, 



46 THE QUESTION 

when he uttered a cry of pain, and the foot was with- 
drawn quickly, with a palpable shudder. He now 
passed over to the farthest extremity of the room, 
and we could judge by his voice of the altitude and 
distance he had attained. He had reached the 
ceiling, upon which he made a slight mark and soon 
afterwards descended and resumed his place at the 
table. An incident which occurred during this 
aerial passage, and imparted a strange solemnity, 
was that the accordion, which we supposed to be 
on the ground under the window close to us, played 
a strain of wild pathos in the air from the most 
distant corner of the room." 

Attestation as to levitations of Home in the same 
year, and in 1868, 1871, and on other occasions, under 
conditions of wellnigh total darkness, in which the 
details, in the main, correspond with the above, 
were made by well-known men, among them Lord 
Lindsay, afterwards Earl of Crawford, 1 Viscount 
Adare, afterwards Earl of Dunraven, and most 
notable of all, by the distinguished physicist, Mr. 
(now Sir William) Crookes, who testified to two 
cases of levitation at which he was present. He says 
that at the second seance Home was seen to be sit- 
ting in the air, supported by nothing visible. Lord 
Lindsay — the only spectator of this phenomenon — 
testified to Home floating horizontally out of the 
room through a slightly opened window and return- 
ing feet foremost through another window. 

The question asked by Jesus, " Which of you by 

1 He was subject to hallucinations of black dogs, figures of women 
and flames of fire on his knees, which, although the phenomena are 
wholly different, suggest caution in accepting his testimony to suspension 
of the law of gravitation. 



HISTORICAL 47 

taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? " * 
may have provoked Home and other mediums to 
attempt to achieve that elongation by other means. 
There is a group of witnesses who depone to having 
seen this accomplished, and, as an exception to the 
usual conditions imposed by mediums, in candle- 
light. Among other witnesses to this is Lord 
Lindsay, who in his evidence before the Dialectical 
Society averred that he saw Home, when in the 
trance state, elongated eleven inches. On awak- 
ing he resumed his natural height. The degree of 
elongation varied from three inches to one reported 
case of eighteen inches. 

Perhaps the most impressive of the feats exhibited 
by Home, which has attestation from Sir William 
Crookes and other witnesses of integrity, is the fire 
ordeal. Sir William tells how Home pulled lumps 
of red-hot coal, one at a time, out of the fire with his 
right hand, then folded a handkerchief, and putting 
his left hand into the fire took out a red-hot cinder 
and put it on the handkerchief, which remained un- 
burnt. Sir William tells us that on another occa- 
sion Home " took a good-sized piece of red-hot coal 
from the fire, put it in his right hand, and carried it 
with the other hand." Then " he blew the small 
furnace thus extemporised till the lump was nearly 
at white heat, and drew my attention to the lam- 
bent flame which was flickering over the coal and 
licking round his fingers. He fell on his knees, 
looked up in a reverent manner, held up the coal 
and said: 'Is not God good? Are not His laws 
wonderful? ' " 

1 Matthew vi. 27. 



48 THE QUESTION 

A presumably less qualified authority, Mrs. S. C. 
Hall, tells that she saw Home poke a large drawing- 
room fire, then draw from it with his hand a big 
lump of red-hot coal and after half-a-minute's pause 
put it on her husband's head. Asked, " Is it not 
hot?" he answered, "Warm, but not hot." Home 
drew Mr. Hall's white hair over the coal, which 
glowed red beneath it, and after a lapse of four or 
five minutes removed the coal. Two or three 
present " attempted to touch it, but it burnt their 
fingers. I said, ' Daniel, bring it to me,' and he 
placed it in my left hand. I felt it warm, yet when 
I stooped down to examine it, my face felt the 
heat so much that I was obliged to withdraw 
it." x 

The same Mr. Hall, a well-known miscellaneous 
author, who died in 1889, relates that at a sitting 
with Home he saw the spirit of his dead sister. But 
the phenomenon of materialisation did not, appar- 
ently, play a large part in Home's seances. " It 
needs heaven-sent moments for this skill," and the 
spirits are coy. As laid down by an authority on 
the subject: "When strict conditions are imposed, 
even when united with harmony and good feeling, 
it is only in very rare instances that full-form mani- 
festations take place." 2 

Next in prominence to Home among the American 
mediums who, at intervals, came to England, were 
the Davenport Brothers, whose credentials, assur- 
ing them welcome, were strengthened by their being 
accompanied by a sort of chaplain, the Rev. J. B. 

1 Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 178. By Lord Adare. 

2 The Spiritualist, 22nd December, 1876. 



HISTORICAL 49 

Ferguson, a " somewhat weak-headed " but guile- 
less man and a sincere believer in the supernormal 
character of the performances of the Brothers. He 
had been converted as the result of attending a 
seance where, by the use of the rapping-alphabet, 
he had been put into communication with a de- 
ceased brother minister. It is difficult to attach 
importance to the phenomena of levitation, elonga- 
tion and fire ordeal as manifestations of the activity 
of departed spirits: the ordinary man would, prima 
facie, expect evidence less gross in character. And 
the remark applies to the phenomenon exhibited by 
the Davenport Brothers, which consisted in sitting 
in dark cabinets and extricating themselves from 
ropes, which in their apparently effectual securing 
were adduced • as the work of invisible hands, and 
which therefore defied unaided human skill to undo. 
However, the spirits, as Cowper says of the Deity, 

"Move in a mysterious way," 
Their " wonders to perform." 

The Brothers arrived in 1864 and remained here for 
about a year, when they went to the Continent, 
staying there till 1868. Of this more hereafter. 

Among other well-accredited American mediums 
the most notable, since the Davenport Brothers, was 
Henry Slade. " Doctor," he dubbed himself, as an 
exception in the country whose male inhabitants, 
according to the late " Max OTtell," are " mostly 
colonels." He came here in the summer of 1876. 
He is described as being of tall, lithe figure, dreamy- 
eyed, having a rather sad smile and a certain melan- 
choly grace of manner, and as of highly wrought 



50 THE QUESTION 

nervous temperament. 1 His special line as a 
medium was in the receipt of communications from 
spirits written on double slates screwed or locked 
together. His sitters put questions orally, or in 
writing on slates, sometimes concealing the questions 
on folded slips of paper. Unlike the phenomena 
already described, these were produced in full light. 
The company were free to bring their own slates, 
mark them for identification, fasten them up, lay 
them on the table, each one keeping his or her eyes 
steadfastly on the medium. Mr. Podmore, whose 
sceptical attitude towards all spiritualistic pheno- 
mena never wavered during many years of investiga- 
tion of them, was, he tells us, " profoundly impressed 
by the performance." 2 He was not alone. Emi- 
nent men of science witnessed the performances and, 
save in two notable instances, to be dealt with later 
on, confessed themselves baffled. So were pro- 
fessional conjurers, one of them confessing that he 
regarded it "as impossible to explain the occurrences 
by prestidigitation of any kind." 3 

Circumstances to be narrated in the next chapter 
compelled Slade to leave England hurriedly in the 
following year. He left an expert successor in one 
William Eglinton, a fellow-countryman, and co- 
worker with Madame Blavatsky. The spirit- 
writing on slates which he exhibited brought a 
crowd of witnesses testifying to the genuineness of 
these unique holographs, and the London Spiritual- 

1 Lucian thus describes the medium Alexander of Abonoteichos : 
" His eyes were piercing and suggested inspiration, his voice at once 
sweet and sonorous." (Fowler's trans. Vol. ii., p. 213.) 

* Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 89. 

1 Ibid., p. 204. 



HISTORICAL 51 

ist Alliance set its hall-mark on them by inviting 
Eglinton to read a paper on the marvels. The 
following narrative is quoted as a typical example 
of his skill. 

A Mr. Smith, to whose exceptionally acute powers 
of observation Mr. Podmore testified, and Mr. J. 
Murray Templeton, had a sitting with Eglinton. 
Expressing the desire of the two to get something 
written which could be regarded as outside the 
knowledge of the three, Mr. Smith took down a 
book haphazard from a shelf, put it on a chair and 
sat on it, while he and Mr. Templeton were arrang- 
ing the page, line, and word to be asked for. This 
was decided by each taking some crayons and pencils 
by chance. One of them found that he had taken 
eighteen crayons, and the other that he had taken 
nine pencils. So they agreed that the " controls " 
should be asked to write the last word of line 18 
on page 9 of the book. The book was produced and 
laid on one of the slates, both of which were held 
beneath the underneath of the table, the book being 
held firmly closed between the table and the slate. 
The three men talked, and in the midst of Mr. Eglin- 
ton's remarks the writing was heard to begin. He 
talked for about half-a-minute ; the writing continued 
a few more seconds before the usual three raps came 
to denote its conclusion. The message on the slate 
was as follows: — "This is a Hungarian book of 
poems. The last word of page 18 (page 9, line 18) 
is bunhoseded." After the trio had observed that a 
mistake in the figures had been corrected in paren- 
thesis, Mr. Smith opened the book at page 9 and 
found that the last word on line 18 of that page was 



52 THE QUESTION 

" bunhoseded." He regarded the test as crucial; 
" for," as he says, "it is difficult to believe that 
Mr. Eglinton can have committed to memory the 
exact position of every word in every book on his 
shelves — containing some two hundred books — or 
more." x As told by Mr. Templeton, the narrative 
differs. Were ever any two witnesses of the same 
occurrence in exact agreement? The test, he says, 
was proposed by Eglinton, the book was not chosen 
haphazard, and the page and line were fixed 
on by taking the actual totals of the crayons 
and pencils. 

This by no means exhausts the list of American 
mediums whom the dwellers in Wonderland re- 
ceived with open arms. Ex uno disce omnes, and to 
recite their names and achievements would be only 
to use " vain repetitions." These can give place to 
the story of the wonders exhibited by a renowned 
home-made medium. 

I refer to the Rev. Stainton Moses, from whose 
directions for the conduct of circles quotations 
have been given. To him the late Dr. Alfred 
Russel Wallace paid this tribute : " He was as re- 
markable a medium as D. D. Home, and during the 
last seventeen years of his life he kept accurate 
and systematic records of all the phenomena that 
occurred through his own psychic powers. He sat 
almost entirely with private friends, many of whom 
also kept notes of what occurred, and after a full 
examination of these independent records, Mr. Myers 
concludes that the various phenomena, many of 
which were of the most remarkable character, are 

1 Modem Spiritualism. Vol. ii., pp. 211, 212. 



HISTORICAL 53 

thoroughly well established." 1 More cautiously, 
Sir Oliver Lodge says that Stainton Moses " wrote 
automatically, i.e. subconsciously, and felt that he 
was in touch with helpful and informing intelli- 
gences." 2 

Son of the headmaster of the Grammar School 
at Donington, in Lincolnshire, Stainton Moses was 
born in 1839. He went up to Oxford in 1858 and 
took Holy Orders in 1863, but indifferent health 
and a " parson's throat " compelled him to give up 
clerical work in 1870, when he came to London as 
tutor to a son of his friends, Dr. and Mrs. Stanhope 
S peers. They were Spiritualists, converted to the 
faith by the belief that they had seen the face of a 
dead relative at a seance where a Mrs. Holmes had 
acted as medium. Stainton Moses was a neurotic, 
therefore of highly susceptible temperament; and 
to this, fostered by sympathetic surroundings, and 
especially to the reading of books on spiritualism, 
notably R. Dale Owen's The Debateable Land? may 
be traced the development of his powers as a 
medium, manifest in both physical and psychical 
phenomena. His reputed high, wellnigh saintly, 
character, and his unblemished career as cleric and 
schoolmaster, begot unwavering trust. Like Home, 

1 Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, p. 102. 

2 Raymond, p. 350, and see his Survival of Man, pp. 94, 104. 

8 This title is applicable to Mr. Owen's statement that when he was 
at Naples, where he was American Minister, Home gave a sitting in 
his (Mr. Owen's) house, when, three or four friends being present, a 
table and lamp weighing ninety-six pounds rose eight or ten inches 
from the floor and remained suspended in the air while one might 
count six or seven, the hands of all present being laid upon the table. 
This is cited by Dr. A. R. Wallace as one of " a few instances in which 
the evidence of preterhuman or spiritual beings is as good and definite 
as it is possible for any evidence of any fact to be." — Miracles and 
Modern Spiritualism, p. 71 (Revised Edition, 1896). 



54 THE QUESTION 

he was never detected in any trickery. His medium- 
istic powers were revealed in 1872, when he became 
English master in University College School, a post 
which he held till 1889. He died in 1892 of a linger- 
ing disease, perhaps self -aggravated. Mr. Podmore 
says that " at the end of his life, during a period of 
extreme nervous prostration, he became a victim, 
like many other mediums, to the drink habit." 1 
He was no professional, he asked no fee nor expected 
one from the select number, often only two, of old 
friends who were invited to his seances. In a room 
where light was wholly excluded rapping-alphabets 
were in full swing — at one seance they indicated the 
presence of forty -nine spirits; the miscellaneous 
objects introduced ranged from gloves and pin- 
cushions to opera-glasses and Parian statuettes. 
Sprayed scents diffused fragrance; sometimes the 
liquid perfume was poured into the upturned hands 
of the sitters, " frequently it would be found oozing 
from the medium's head and running down, like the 
precious ointment of Aaron, to his beard." 2 Con- 
firming an entry in Mrs. S peers' diary, Moses says 
that on one occasion he was levitated more than six 
feet. Dr. and Mrs. Speers averred that one evening 
a brilliant cross, its colours varying, appeared 
behind the medium's head, 3 from which time spirit 

1 Modem Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 288. 

" There is certainly some evidence indicating that continual sittings 
for physical phenomena cause an illegitimate and excessive drain on 
the vitality of a medium, creating a nervous exhaustion which is apt 
to lead, in extreme cases, to mental derangement, or to an habitual 
resort to stimulants with a no less deplorable end." — On the Threshold 
of the Unseen, p. 261. By Sir W. F. Barrett. 

3 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 278. 

* In Home's case a crystal ball emitting flashes of coloured light 
appeared. 



HISTORICAL 55 

lights were often seen, accompanied by spirit music. 
To Moses himself came not, as to his namesake on 
the Mount, " the glory of the Lord like devouring 
fire," but the voices of Swedenborg, Bishop Wilber- 
force and others departed, while nearly forty of 
the less famous among these sent messages proving 
their identity, through Imperator, the guiding 
" control " * who directed the medium's hand in spirit 
writing. These communications fill twenty-four 
notebooks, and contain not only autobiographical 
details, but homilies of the ordinary pulpit type, 
which can hardly be construed as forming part of 
any "new revelation." A quotation from one of 
them will serve as sample of the whole. Pitched in 
the triumphant note of "Arise, shine; for thy light 
is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon 
thee," 2 it seems to herald the passing away of the 
old order and the advent of the new Spiritualism. 
" We tell you, friend, that the end draws nigh. It 
shall not be always so. As it was in the days which 
preceded the coming of the Son of Man; as it has 
been in the midnight hours which precede every 
day dream from on high, so it is now. The night 
of ignorance is fast passing away. The shackles 
which priestcraft has hung around struggling souls 

1 Sir Oliver Lodge explains that " the control or second personality 
which speaks during the trance appears to be more closely in touch 
with what is popularly spoken of as ' the next world ' than with 
customary human existence, and accordingly is able to get messages 
through from people deceased, transmitting them through the speech 
or writing of the medium, usually with some obscurity and misunder- 
standing, and with mannerisms belonging either to the medium or to 
the control." — Raymond, p. 87. 

The controls, as will be seen, form a miscellaneous company, ranging 
from philosophers to charwomen. 

2 Isaiah lx. 1. 



56 THE QUESTION 

shall be knocked off, and in place of fanatical folly 
and ignorant Pharisaism and misty speculation you 
shall have a reasonable religion and a divine faith. 
You shall have richer views of God, truer notions of 
your duty and destiny; you shall know that they 
whom you call dead are alive amongst you, living, 
as they lived on earth, only more really: minister- 
ing to you with undiminished love; animated in 
their unwearying intercourse with the same affec- 
tion which they bore to you whilst they were yet 
incarned." To this follow assurances on man's 
immortality. " Man never dies, cannot die, how- 
ever he may wish it — in that great truth rests the 
key to the future." 

In the year that Stainton Moses died interest 
gathered round a medium of different type, one 
Eusapia Palladino, an uneducated Neapolitan, to 
whom the late Dr. A. It. Wallace bore witness as 
follows : — 

She " had been tested by numbers of men of 
science — Italian, German and French — all of whom 
became satisfied of the genuineness of the manifesta- 
tions. The sittings took place in private houses 
belonging to Professor Charles Richet, a French 
physician, who has made a special study of mental 
diseases and of hypnotism, and under test conditions 
usually under Professor Lodge's personal super- 
vision. The phenomena consisted of the motion 
of various objects at considerable distances from 
the medium, the appearance of hands and 
faces not those of any person present, musical 
sounds produced on an accordion and piano while 
no one was touching either instrument, a heavy 



HISTORICAL 57 

table turned completely over while untouched by 
anyone, various parts of the Professor's body 
touched or grasped as by invisible hands while the 
medium's hands were securely held, and lights like 
glow-worms flitting about the room. His con- 
clusion was that these various phenomena were not 
produced by the medium in any normal way, and 
that they were not explicable as the result of any 
known physical causes." x 

The tests to which Eusapia was required to sub- 
mit were numerous; they extend over nearly 
twenty years. They began in 1892 and were re- 
peated in 1894, on the He Roubaud, near Hyeres, 
when Professor Lodge vouched that the phenomena 
" were amply sufficient in themselves to establish a 
scientifically unrecognised truth." In 1895 Eusapia 
was brought to Cambridge, when, as will be told 
in the next chapter, doubts as to the genuineness 
of her manifestations were expressed, causing 
Professor Lodge materially to modify his 
previous judgment. In a letter dated 2d No- 
vember, 1895, and printed in Light, he said: 
" Eusapia has shown that she employs artifice and 
deceives: so much is certain. She has just as 
certainly shown that she can cause genuine pheno- 
mena. That is my opinion." During the years 
1905, 1906 and 1907 investigations into her medium- 
istic powers were carried on at forty -three sittings, 
some at Naples, some at Turin and the larger 
number at Paris, where M. and Madame Curie were 
members of the investigating body appointed by 
the Institut General Psychologique. Following 

1 Miracle? and Modem S'piritualism, p. 104. 



58 THE QUESTION 

on this, a committee was appointed by the Society 
for Psychical Research in 1908, the sittings being 
held at Naples in the winter of that year. Finally, 
Eusapia went to America in November, 1909, and 
stayed there till June, 1910, during which period 
she gave between thirty and forty seances. These 
are described in detail by Mr. Hereward Carrington 
— who attended the larger number — in his Personal 
Experiences in Spiritualism 1 (he had been present 
at the Naples seances). 

It was remarked at the outset that the " new 
revelation," following the processes of evolution 
(adapting itself, perchance, like an older revelation, 
to " the hardness of men's hearts "), was gradual in 
the character of its manifestations. Some twelve 
years appear to have passed before the grosser 
physical phenomena at Hydeville and other places 
were followed by more ethereal phenomena in the 
materialised forms of the departed. This privilege 
was also first accorded to America. 

The first record of that marvel dates from 
October, 1860. At a seance held by Robert Dale 
Owen, where Mrs. Underhill (a married daughter of 
the Foxs) was the medium, a veiled and luminous 
female figure appeared and walked about the room. 
Later on Kate Fox (heroine of the Hydeville story) 
gave sittings to a disconsolate widower, a Mr. Liver- 
more, of New York, and was able to assuage his 
grief by invoking a figure in whom he recognised 
his dead wife. But he was not permitted to ap- 
proach her. By the powers of the same medium, 
materialised spirits outside family groups appeared. 

1 Part II. (T. Werner Laurie.) 



HISTORICAL 59 

Among these was Benjamin Franklin. But it was 
not till January, 1872, that the proselytes "with- 
out the gate " had these celestial visions vouchsafed 
to them. Mrs. Guppy, famous in the annals of 
levitation, was the first to achieve distinction among 
us in successfully " calling spirits from the vasty 
deep " — or height. At a seance at her house, where 
a sister medium was present, a face " white as 
alabaster " appeared at an upper opening in the 
cabinet: at a seance held by two mediums, Heme 
and Williams, three weeks later the number of 
spirit shapes grew apace. They were rendered 
visible in the semi-darkness by luminous smoke or 
vapour, accompanied by a faint smell of phosphorus 
— not sulphur! A similar smell was emitted at a 
seance given by the first Mrs. Guppy some years 
earlier, and notably, on another occasion, when 
spirit lights appeared at a seance given by Mr. 
Stainton Moses to his friends the Speers. Heme 
and Williams were eclipsed by other mediums, 
among them a Miss Showers, of Teignmouth, a girl 
of sixteen. At her seance the old and the new 
phenomena met together. Saucepans jumped off 
the fire, dish-covers leapt to the bell wires, otto- 
mans and flower-pots flew about, and a table 
started running across the room. In the midst of 
this wantonness one of the company recognised the 
materialised spirit of the notorious John King (he 
was, when in the flesh, the buccaneer Morgan) and 
of one Peter sitting on the sofa. This was ac- 
complished through the mediumship of Ellen, the 
servant, to whom the considerate Peter prescribed 
a good supper, wine included. This may be 



60 THE QUESTION 

paralleled by the incident at a Maori seance, when 
the spirit of a deceased chief spoke through the 
priest medium, who was sitting in the darkest 
corner of the house. The spirit assured his 
"sister" that all was well with him, and added: 
" Give my large pig to the priest." x Among the 
Samoans " the priest generally managed to make 
the god say what he wished him to say, or to 
make demands for something which the priest him- 
self wished to possess." 2 

An important witness now appears on the scene 
to dispel any doubts which had been felt by some 
as to whether the medium and the spirit are not one 
and the same person. At seances held at his own 
house in May, 1874, where a girl named Florence 
Cook, then in her sixteenth year, was the medium, 
Sir William (then Mr.) Crookes, averred that he had 
seen the materialised spirit of Katie King, daughter 
of the above named John King, of whom — i.e. of 
Katie — it was arranged that photographs should be 
taken. This is Sir William's testimony: 

" I frequently drew the curtain on one side when 
Katie was standing near, and it was a common thing 
for the seven or eight of us to see Miss Cook and 
Katie at the same time under the full blaze of the 
electric light. We did not on these occasions 
actually see the face of the medium, because of the 
shawl, but we saw her hands and feet. [Miss Cook 
was lying on the floor, with her face muffled in a 
shawl.] We saw her move uneasily under the in- 

1 Quoted from " Old New Zealand " in Cock Lane and Common 
Sense, p. 42. By Andrew Lang. 

2 Melanesians and Polynesians, p. 224. By George Brown, D.D. 



HISTORICAL 61 

fluence of the intense light and we heard her moan 
occasionally. I have one photograph of the two 
together, but Katie is seated in front of Miss Cook's 
head. At a later seance, held in Miss Cook's bed- 
room, which had been transformed into a dark 
cabinet, Sir William was privileged to be present 
behind the curtain at the farewell meeting between 
Miss Cook and Katie, and saw and heard the two 
figures conversing together for several minutes." * 
Such is the evidence given by that distinguished 
savant as to the temporary return of the departed 
from the realm of spirits. 

In his Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism 
Sir William refers to the sensation of a " peculiar 
cold air, sometimes amounting to a decided wind " 
... a cold so intense that he could compare it 
only " to that felt when the hand has been within 
a few inches of frozen mercury," 2 which frequently 
precedes the manifestation of the figures. Mr. 
Edward Carpenter suggests that this may be 
due " in part at any rate to a condensation of 
water-vapour on the accreting particles of the 
spirit body." 3 The intimate connection in barbaric 
thought between wind and spirit was referred to in 
the introductory chapter. As the Maori of New 
Zealand heard in the wind the signs of the presence 
of their god, so does the spiritualist find proof of the 
presence of the departed in the " decided wind " to 
which Sir William testifies. 

Speaking of spirit photographs, Dr. Wallace ex- 

1 Modem Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 155. 

2 P. 86. 

8 Drama of Love and Death, p. 203. 



62 THE QUESTION 

presses his satisfaction " that whatever marvels 
occur in America can be reproduced here," and he 
cites examples of " clearly recognisable likeness of 
deceased friends having been obtained." 1 Among 
those possessing exceptional interest is that of the 
late William Howitt's " two sons, many years dead, 
the likenesses to whom were instantly recognised 
by the parents as ' perfect and unmistakable.' " 
The interest for spiritualists lies in the light which 
that photograph throws on the debatable question 
whether the spirits remain at the stage of develop- 
ment when they depart, or, as in the case of babies dy- 
ing immediately after their birth, of non-development. 

As bearing on this, at an exhibition of spirit 
photographs at the Spiritualists' Hall, Chiswick, in 
the spring of 1904, Mr. Blackall " stated that his 
subjects are able to give sittings for any period of 
their earthly existence, just as when our thoughts 
can now run over the past periods of our lives." 
Among the spirits photographed as peering over 
Mr. Blackall's shoulder were those of Browning, 
Tennyson, Longfellow, Charles Dickens, Huxley, 
Darwin and Napoleon. It was regrettable to hear 
him add that only one photographer in England 
was able to take the portraits and that " he has 
now retired from business." " The exhibition," says 
the reporter of the interview with Mr. Blackall, " is 
unique." 2 None of us can contradict that. 

Speaking of the " photography of the cloud fig- 
ures (some of them very definite in outline) which 
are found to emanate on occasions from mediums 

1 Miracles and Modem Spiritualism, p. 196. 
* Daily Chronicle, 19th March, 1904. 



HISTORICAL 63 

in the state of trance," Mr. Edward Carpenter says : 
" Notwithstanding the doubt which has commonly- 
been cast on all such photographs, and notwith- 
standing the very obvious ease with which cameras 
can be manipulated and shadow figures of some 
kind fraudulently produced, the evidence for the 
genuineness of some such ' spirit ' photographs is — 
to anyone who really studies it — beyond question. 
. . . The evidence is so abundant and, on the 
whole, so well confirmed that we are practically now 
compelled to admit (and this is the point in hand) 
that cloud-like forms of human outline emanating 
from a medium or other person's body may at 
times be caught by the photographic plate. . . . 
That these forms, occurring and occasionally photo- 
graphed in connection with mediums, are ' inde- 
pendent spirits ' or souls, is, of course, in no way 
assured. They may be such or (what seems more 
likely) they may be simply extensions of the spiritual 
or inner body of the medium." 1 In his little book 
on Psychical Research Sir W. F. Barrett makes no 
reference to the matter. Sir Oliver Lodge leaves it 
an open question, but his leanings are obvious. 
" The question of photography applied to visible 
phantasms, and to an invisible variety [can any 
rational explanation of these words be supplied?] 
said to be perceived by clairvoyants, is still an open 
one — at any rate no photographic evidence has yet 
appeared conclusive to me. If successful, photog- 
raphy could prove that the impression was not only 
a mental one, but that the ether of space had been 
definitely affected in a certain way also, so that the 

1 Drama of Love and Death, pp. 186, 187. 



U THE QUESTION 

impression had probably become received by the 
optical apparatus of the eye, and had been trans- 
mitted in the usual way to the brain." x On a later 
page this elusive writer, whose confusion of thought 
is manifest in the obscureness of his language, says: 
" The fact that a photograph can be clearly recog- 
nised when the medium has only seen the person 
clairvoyantly, on the other side of the veil, is 
suggestive, since it seems to show that the general 
appearance is preserved — or, in other words, that 
each human body is a true representation of 
personality." 2 

At this time of day it may seem as the sending of 
" owls to Athens " to discourse to intelligent readers 
on Apparitions and Haunted Houses. But when, 
as in Sir W. F. Barrett's Psychical Research, cases 
of apparition are discussed as having " high evi- 
dential value," 3 when they are referred to in Sir 
Oliver Lodge's Survival of Man as possibly not 
" purely subjective, belonging to what are some- 
times spoken of as incipient materialisation " 4 ; and 
when Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace devotes a long 
chapter of his Miracles and Modern Spiritualism to 
prove their objectivity; discussion of the subject 
here has warrant. 

Professor Davenport says that " there is in the 
average man a great slumbering mass of fear that he 
cannot shake off, made up of instincts and feelings 
inherited from a long human and animal past." 5 
The animal, the child, and the ignorant, and there- 

1 Survival of Man, p. 77 (1915 edition). 

2 Survival of Man, p. 220. 

8 P. 120. 4 P. 83. 

Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals, p. 224. 



HISTORICAL 65 

fore the superstitious, alike tremble before the un- 
known and the unusual; they fear, but know not 
what they fear. Ignorance is the mother of 
mystery, and the mysterious remains the dreaded. 
" Fear, in sooth," says Lucretius, " takes such a 
hold of all mortals, because they see so many opera- 
tions go on in earth and heaven, the courses of 
which they can in no way understand." x This has 
supplement in Hobbes' Leviathan: " This feare of 
things invisible is the naturall Seed of that which 
every one in himself calleth Religion; and in them 
that worship, or feare the Power otherwise than they 
do, Superstition." 2 

Hence the mental state of both the savage and 
the illiterate is one of nervous instability. " A 
gust of contrarie wind, the croaking of a flight of 
Ravens, the false pace of a Horse, the casual flight 
of an Eagle, a dreame, a sodain voice, a false sign, 
are enough to overthrow, sufficient to overwhelme, 
and able to pull him to the ground." 3 The flimsiest 
report of the appearance of a ghost anywhere will 
draw thousands to the spot; presumably intelligent 
persons will write to the newspapers asserting their 
belief in the existence of these troubiers of house- 
holds. When rumours of a haunted house in 
Ballachin were spread abroad a few years ago, the 
Society for Psychical Research deemed them of 
sufficient importance to make investigations on the 
spot, and a correspondent who slept in the house 
wrote thus to The Times: " Of one thing I am 
certain — that is, that there is something super- 

1 De Rerurn Natura. Book I., pp. 151-154. 

* Part I., chapter xi. " Of Man." 

s Essays. By Montaigne. Book II., chapter xii. (Florio's trans.) 



6Q THE QUESTION 

natural in the noises and things that I heard and 
experienced there." x 

At a reputed haunted house in Oxfordshire, 
all the inmates avoided a room whence issued 
at night " weird music, now sweet and soft and 
lovely as a dream, then swelling into weird con- 
fusion, and then dying away in long-drawn moans 
of infinite distress." When a carpenter at last was 
sent for he found a perfect plexus of bell wires 
underneath the floor of the haunted chamber. 
" When doors and windows were all closed, and 
everything was still at night, the wind, finding its 
way in by what channel it could, turned this laby- 
rinth of wires into an seolian harp, whence issued 
the mysterious sounds by which successive families 
had been scared." 2 

Some time back (I omitted to note the date) it 
was stated in a paper called Health that above one 
thousand houses in London are tenantless because 
they are believed to be haunted. Imitating the pre- 
cision of the Dublin lawyer who, challenging his 
opponent to a duel, and fixing the meeting in 
Phoenix Park, added, " in the Fifteen Acres, be the 
same more or less," I may say that the exact 
number of houses in the area ruled by the London 
County Council is given in its last " Statistical 
Report (1911) " as 606,271. This provides, as 
nearly as can be, one ghost to every six hundred 
dwellings; and, as that supply doubtless exceeds 
the demand, it is not well to hamper the result by 
adding the number of skeletons producible from the 
cupboards of the 606,271 houses. 

1 Times, 8th and 10th June, 189T. 2 Times, 25th August, 189T. 



HISTORICAL 67 

More than three centuries ago Reginald Scot, 
bravely and perilously attacking superstitions in his 
Discoverie of Witchcraft, asked in triumphant tones : 
" Where are the soules that swarmed in times past? 
Where are the spirits? Who heareth their noises? 
Who seeth their visions ? . . . Where be the spirits 
that wandered to have buriall for their bodies?" 1 

Where, indeed? Why, everywhere, in the belief 
of physicists, as well as of peasants, some of the 
physicists even contending when a medium is 
exposed that, despite the detection of the sorry 
trickery, there is a residuum of phenomena which 
points to the action of supernatural agents. Credat 
Judceus Apella, non ego. 

The list is a long one, stretching far back. 
Numberless bells have been rung; mountains of 
crockery smashed; cartloads of missiles hurled; 
hundreds upon hundreds of people frightened out 
of their wits, and thousands upon thousands cheated 
of their sleep, through the assumed activities of 
the crowd of semi-incarnates. The literature of the 
subject, whether treated seriously or to entertain, is 
enormous. Certain stories stand out from the rest, 
as, for example, that of the Drummer of Tedworth, 
who came with a " blooming noisome smell," used 
the rapping-alphabet, banged on his big drum and 
terrorised Mr. Mompesson and his children in revenge 
of his arrest and sentence to transportation. More 
famous than he is the ghost of " Old Jeffery," who 
harried the Wesley household at Epworth with 
" groans, squeaks, tinglings and knockings," and 
who was not to be scared away by the Reverend 

1 P. 390, in 1886 reprint of 1584- edition. 



68 THE QUESTION 

Samuel Wesley's purchase of a mastiff. Later in 
arrival was the Cock Lane Ghost, whose story, as a 
type of others of its kind, bears telling in more detail. 

The materials for our knowledge of this legend 
are: 1. A pamphlet entitled The Mystery Revealed: 
Containing a Series of Transactions and Authentic 
Testimonials respecting the supposed Cock Lane 
Ghost, the authorship of which has been attributed to 
Goldsmith. As to this the British Museum Cata- 
logue is silent. 2. The Annual Register, pp. 142-46. 
3. The Gentleman's Magazine, XXXII., pp. 44, 81, 
82. Each of these is of the year 1762. There is 
also in the British Museum Catalogue an entry: 
<c Cock Lane Humbug, a Song. London, 1762. 
A slip fol." 

Briefly told, this is the story. In 1756 Mr. Kent, 
a Norfolk man, lost his wife, and her sister Fanny 
came to him as housekeeper. Like Matthew 
Arnold's typical Nonconformist, he had " an eye 
on his deceased wife's sister," and she returned the 
glance. Mrs. Kent had died in child-bed, but as the 
baby lived, although only for a few minutes after 
its birth, the canon law, according to the author of 
The Mystery Revealed, forbade the marriage of the 
widower with his sister-in-law. From her he fled to 
London, but there she followed him, first by letters 
and then in person, the result being that " they 
thought it, in foro conscientia?, no crime to indulge 
their mutual passion." After one or two shifts they 
settled in lodgings in Cock Lane, in the house of one 
Parsons, clerk of St. Sepulchre's, Holborn. Kent, 
having to go into the country, left Fanny alone, 
whereupon she asked Parsons's daughter Elizabeth 



HISTORICAL 69 

to sleep with her. At night strange scratchings 
and rappings broke Fanny's rest, the more so as 
she interpreted these as monitions of her death. Of 
these we hear no more after Kent's return. After 
a time, as the result of a squabble between lodger 
and landlord over money lent to the latter, Kent 
removed to Bartlet's Court, Clerkenwell, where, in 
February, 1760, Fanny, being then with child, died 
of small-pox and was buried in the vault of St. 
John's Church. During 1761 and the earlier part of 
1762 the noises that had disturbed poor Fanny's 
sleep were renewed in Parsons's house. They seemed 
to come from Elizabeth Parsons's bed, the girl her- 
self being " always affected with tremblings and 
shiverings at the coming and going of the ghost," 
and feeling " the spirit like a mouse upon her back." 
The ghost itself appeared to some as a " shrouded, 
headless figure." The report of the apparition 
spread like wildfire through the town and brought 
crowds to Cock Lane. 

Under date of 29th January, 1762, Horace Wal- 
pole writes to Sir Horace Mann: "We are again 
dipped into an egregious scene of folly. The reign- 
ing fashion is a ghost — a ghost that would not pass 
muster in the paltriest convent in the Apennines. 
It only knocks and scratches; does not pretend to 
appear or speak. The clergy give it their bene- 
diction, and all the world, whether believers or 
infidels, go to hear it. I, in which number you may 
guess, go to-morrow, for it is as much the mode to 
visit the ghost as the Prince of Mecklenburg, who is 
just arrived." x 

1 Letters. Vol. iii., p. 479 (Toynbee's edition). 



70 THE QUESTION 

The result of Walpole's visit is told in a letter 
to George Montagu within four days after that to 
Mann: "I could send you volumes on the ghost. 
... A drunken parish clerk set it on foot out of 
revenge; the Methodists have adopted it, and the 
whole town of London think of nothing else. . . . 
I went to hear it, for it is not an apparition, but an 
audition. The Duke of York, Lady Northumber- 
land, Lady Mary Coke, Lord Hertford and I, all in 
one hackney coach. It rained torrents, yet the lane 
was full of mob, and the house so full we couldn't 
get in. At last they discovered it was the Duke 
of York, and the company squeezed themselves 
into one another's pockets to make room for us. 
The house, which is borrowed, and to which the 
ghost has adjourned, is wretchedly small and 
miserable; when we opened the chamber, in which 
were fifty people, with no light but one tallow candle 
at the end, we tumbled over the bed of the child to 
whom the ghost comes, and whom they are murder- 
ing by inches in such insufferable heat and stench. 
At the top of the room are ropes to dry clothes. I 
asked if we were to have rope-dancing between the 
acts. We had nothing. They told us, as they 
would at a puppet show, that it would not come 
that night till seven in the morning — that is, when 
there are only 'prentices and old women. We 
stayed, however, till half-an-hour after one. The 
Methodists have promised them contributions; pro- 
visions are sent in like forage, and all the taverns 
and ale-houses in the neighbourhood make fortunes. 
The most diverting part is to hear people wondering 
when it will be found out — as if there was anything 



HISTORICAL 71 

to find out; as if the actors would make their 
noises when they can be discovered. However, as 
this pantomime cannot last much longer, I hope 
Lady Fanny Shirley will set up a ghost of her 
own at Twickenham, and then you shall hear one." x 

A Mr. Brown and Mary Frazer, the girl's nurse, 
asked the ghost to answer questions in the way 
approved by ghosts generally — namely, one knock 
for " Yes " and two knocks for " No " — the result 
being that the spirit, who was none other than 
Fanny herself, declared that Kent had " poisoned 
her by putting arsenic in purl 2 and administering 
it to her when ill of the small-pox." The spirit 
properly added that she hoped to see Kent hanged. 
The medium, as she would be called nowadays, was 
taken to other houses, with varying result; and at 
last a movement towards strict investigation of the 
phenomena was set on foot, Parsons reluctantly 
consenting to the girl's removal to the house of 
the Rev. Mr. Aldrich, a clergyman of Clerkenwell, 
where there assembled " many gentlemen eminent 
for their rank and character," among them being 
Dr. Johnson. 

The girl was put to bed by some ladies; all 
avenues against fraud or collusion were blocked; 
the company watched her for above an hour and 
nothing happened. Then the men went downstairs, 
but soon after were summoned by the ladies, who 
reported that the scratchings and rappings had 
begun. The girl was then bidden to put her hands 
outside the bed, when the noises ceased. The 

1 Letters. Vol. iii., pp. 381, 382. 

2 Malt liquor medicated with wormwood or aromatic herbs. 



72 THE QUESTION 

verdict thus far arrived at is set down, presumably 
by Dr. Johnson, in The Gentleman's Magazine. 
After reciting the occurrence, he says: "It is, 
therefore, the opinion of the whole assembly that 
the child has some art of making or counterfeiting 
a particular noise, and that there is no agency of 
any higher cause." To this there is appended, 
probably by " Sylvanus Urban," the following note, 
printed in italics: — 



" This account was drawn up by a gentleman of veracity and 
learning, and therefore we have thought it sufficient, though the im- 
posture has been since more clearly detected even to demonstration " 
(XXXII., p. 81). 



There had been a fruitless visit to the vault of St. 
John's, because the spirit of Fanny had promised to 
rap on her coffin, and the next day the girl Parsons 
was threatened with committal to Newgate if, 
under the checks imposed, the noises were not 
resumed. Thereupon she hid a board about six 
inches long " under her stays," and so produced the 
noises; but both she and the company assembled 
agreed that " these had not the least likeness to 
the former noises." Denying trickery, she was 
" searched, and caught in the lie." But there was 
" concurrent opinion that the child had been 
frightened by threats into this attempt," so that 
the mystery of the original scratchings and rap- 
pings remained unsolved. In the sequel Parsons 
and some accomplices were tried at the Guildhall 
for, as Horace Walpole hints in the letter already 
quoted, " conspiring against the life and character 
of Mr. Kent in making the girl the medium of the 



HISTORICAL 73 

slander that he had poisoned Fanny." Parsons was 
sentenced to stand in the pillory three times and 
then to two years' imprisonment; his wife to one 
year's imprisonment; while the others escaped by 
paying a fine of between £500 and £600 to Mr. 
Kent. Elizabeth Parsons, dupe or minx, or perhaps 
a mixture of both, vanishes into space. 

Sixteen years afterwards a profligate parson, 
Cornelius Ford, a cousin of Dr. Johnson's, died at 
the Hummums Hotel (Arabic hamman^hot bath), 
Covent Garden. A waiter there, who was absent 
at the time, and not having heard of Ford's death, 
going down to the cellar on his return, met him, not 
once only, but afterwards. He reported this to his 
master, and asked him what business Ford had 
there, when he was told of his death. The shock 
brought on a fever. On his recovery he said that 
he had a message from Ford to deliver to some 
women, but he was not to tell what it was or to 
whom it was given. He walked out and was fol- 
lowed, but somewhere about St. Paul's the trackers 
lost him. He came back and said that he had 
delivered the message. The effect of this was to 
frighten the hotel servants. When Johnson heard 
the story he said: " The man had a fever, and this 
vision may have been the beginning of it." x This 
was a shrewd comment from a man who was no 
sceptic, to be paralleled by the following passage 
from Bishop Burnet's " Autobiography " (appended 
to Miss H. C. Foxcraft's Supplement to Burnet's 
History of My Own Time) : 

1 Boswell's Life of Johnson. Vol. iii., p. 349 (Birkbeck Hill's 
edition). 



74 THE QUESTION 

" The Countess of Belcarras, with whom I had lived in great 
friendship for many years, sent for me to come to her in all hast. 
When I came she told me her daughter had fitts of a strange nature, 
in which she lay waking, but knew nobody; she spoke all the while 
like one in heaven, as if she had been conversing with God and the 
holy angels. . . . She was then about eighteen, and was an extraor- 
dinary person in all respects. I apprehended there was something 
belonging to her sexe in the case, so I advised her mother to send for 
a phyiician. He set nature right, and she had no more fitts. I had 
heard of other instances of this sort, but never knew any besides this; 
in it I saw how nuns, by their state of life, might be subject to such 
fitts, so stories of that sort among them are not all to be rejected as 
fictions, nor to be entertained as things supernaturall " (p. 474). 

Given a healthy condition of mind and body, there 
is no room for phantasms of either the living or the 
dead. The causes which beget them are explained 
and their doom is certain. 

Gradually there is being brought about the in- 
clusion, within the realm of unbroken order, of the 
great mass of phenomena once regarded as due to 
supernatural causes, both good and baleful. What 
yet remains without is there because of the strength 
of prejudice and ignorance, or because the evidence 
for its incorporation is incomplete. As to the 
ultimate issue there can be no doubt. The dis- 
union which human misconception has assumed, 
giving us nature and supernature, will vanish when 
the full light of knowledge is cast upon it. For 
the kingdom of superstition is the kingdom of 
darkness. As Dowlas, the farrier in Silas Marner, 
says : " If ghos'es want me to believe in 'em, let 'em 
leave off skulking i' the dark and i' lone places 
— let 'em come where there's company and 
candles." 

Thirty years ago, upon reviewing Myers, Gurney 
and Podmore's Phantasms of the Living in The Pall 



HISTORICAL 75 

Mall Gazette,, Mr. G. Bernard Shaw wrote : " It 
is useless to mince matters in dealing with ghost 
stories — the existence of a liar is more probable 
than the existence of a ghost." Upon reading this, 
my wife said that it recalled to her memory a 
case of wilful self-deception which came within 
her experience when she was a student at a horti- 
cultural college. This is her story: "The rear of 
the building had originally formed part of a Queen 
Anne mansion, and the additions to it were of a 
character irregular enough to supply shelter to any 
lurking ghost; hence there was the usual legend of 
a grey lady said to be the spirit of a murdered nun, 
which haunted the house, and sometimes swept 
along the corridors. The story gathered credence 
from the superstitious because the college house- 
keeper said that she had heard taps and foot- 
steps. 

" The need to be up betimes to work in the garden 
led to a rule that the students must be in their 
rooms not later than 10 p.m. However, one night 
I stayed reading in a fellow-student's room till 
twelve-thirty. To get to my room I had to pass 
one occupied by a senior member of the staff. I 
had got barely three yards past it when the door 
was opened suddenly and the occupant looked out, 
so I put on the pace to reach my room. I expected 
trouble the next morning, a summons and repri- 
mand, but nothing happened. Then I heard that 
the lady had had a terrible fright in the night: 
she had seen the ghost! So I went to her at once 
to disabuse her mind, telling her that I was the 
ghost, but instead of censure for thus frightening 



76 THE QUESTION 

her, my explanation was received with scorn, and 
I was dismissed with the remark : ' Well, if it was 
you last night, you can't account for my experi- 
ence on other nights when you did not pass my 
door.' " 



II 

EXPLANATORY 

" When men have once acquiesced in untrue opinions and registered 
them as authentic records in their minds, it is no less impossible to 
speak intelligently to such men as to write legibly on a paper already 
scribbled over." — Hobbes: Leviathan. 

IT was shown at the outset that the soul-idea has 
remained fundamentally the same through every 
stage of culture. And there is equally cogent 
evidence that in their conceptions of the behaviour 
of discarnate spirits the savage and the spiritualist 
are one. It cannot be otherwise. 

"Vain questions! from the first 
Put, and no answer found. 
He binds us with the chain 
Wherewith himself is bound. 
From west to east the earth 
Unrolls her primal curve; 
The sun himself were vexed 
Did she one furlong swerve; 
The myriad years have whirled her hither, 
But tell not of the whence or whither." 1 

The spiritualist affirms that the quest is not in 
vain; that certain groups of phenomena give us 
assurance of the whither. The physical and the 
psychical in these phenomena remain mixed: some 
of the more repellent features appear only sporadic- 

1 F. T. Palgrave. The Reign of Law. 

77 



78 THE QUESTION 

ally, others, such as raps and table-tilting, are still 
credentials of the " new revelation." One has to 
" possess the soul in patience " in the effort to take 
seriously the stories of the Puck-like antics and 
dare-deviltry of poltergeists when these are 
claimed to be part of the evidence of a spiritual 
world. In his Discoverie of Witchcraft, published in 
1584, Reginald Scot tells in his day of the " jocund 
and facetious spirits who sport themselves in the 
night by tumbling and fooling with Servants and 
Shepherds in Country Houses, pinching them black 
and blue." 1 Among the Chukchee tribes of Siberia 
" sometimes the spirits are very mischievous. In 
the movable tents of the Reindeer people an invisible 
hand will sometimes turn everything upside down 
and throw different objects about." 2 

The table played an important part in the 
Raymond communications. It tilted as the letter 
of the alphabet is spoken by the medium, stopping 
when a right letter is reached and tilting three 
times to indicate " Yes " and once to indicate " No." 
Its wonderful properties are thus gravely vouched 
for by Sir Oliver Lodge. " For the time it is ani- 
mated — somewhat perhaps as a violin or piano is 
animated by a skilled musician and schooled to his 
will — and the dramatic action thus attained is very 
remarkable. [The italics are mine.] It can ex- 
hibit hesitation; it can exhibit certainty; it can seek 
for information; it can convey it; it can apparently 
ponder before giving a reply; it can welcome a 
new-comer; it can indicate joy or sorrow, fun or 

1 P. 510 (1886, reprint). 

a Aboriginal Siberia, p. 932. By M. A. Czaplicka. 



EXPLANATORY 79 

gravity; and most notable of all, it can exhibit 
affection in an unmistakable manner." x In evi- 
dence of this it is reported that at one of the 
sittings " the table seemed to wish to get into Lady- 
Lodge's lap and made most caressing movements 
to and fro, and seemed as if it could not get close 
enough to her." 2 

'Tis an old, old story. In 1853 Pere Arnaud 
describes a seance with the Nasquape Indians: 
" The conjurers shut themselves up in a little lodge 
[i.e. the medium's " cabinet "], and remain for a few 
minutes in a pensive attitude, cross-legged. Soon 
the lodge begins to move like a table turning, and 
replies by bounds and jumps to the questions put 
to the inquirer." 3 

In the Solomon Islands, when the question arises 
whether or no a fleet of canoes shall put to sea, a 
mane kisu or wizard is consulted. "He declares 
that he has felt a tindalo [deceased spirit] come on 
board one of the canoes, because ' one side of it has 
been pressed down.' He therefore asks the ques- 
tion: 'Shall we go? Shall we go there?' If the 
canoe rocks, the answer is in the affirmative, if it 
lies steady, in the negative." 4 Among the same 
people, when a man falls sick, he sends for the 
medicine-man to find out " what tindalo is eating 
him." The medicine-man brings an assistant, and 
holding a bamboo between them, the wizard slaps 
the end which he holds, calls one after another the 

1 Raymond, p. 363. 

2 Ibid., p. 221. 

s Hind's Exploration of the Labrador Peninsula. Vol. ii., p. 162 
(1863). 

* Codrington's Melanesians, p. 210. 



80 THE QUESTION 

names of dead men: when he names the one who 
is afflicting the sick man the bamboo becomes vio- 
lently agitated. The Manganja believed that their 
medicine-men could impart power to anything and 
employed one of them to detect the stealer of some 
corn. So in the presence of the assembled natives 
he took two sticks, which, after fantastic gestures 
and gibberish, he handed to four young men, two 
holding each stick; he then gave a zebra tail and a 
calabash rattle to a young man and a boy. Then 
he rolled on the ground, muttering incantations: 
the bearers of the tail and the rattle danced round 
the stick-holders, who after a time had spasmodic 
twitchings of the limbs, foamed at the mouth and 
behaved as if demon-possessed. But the popular be- 
lief was that the sticks were possessed and through 
them the men, whom they " whirled and dragged 
through bush and thorny shrubs till they were torn 
and bleeding. At last they came back to the as- 
sembly, whirled round again and rushed down the 
path, to fall panting and exhausted in the hut of 
one of the chief's wives, the sticks rolling to her 
very feet, thus denouncing her as the thief. She 
denied it, but the medicine-man said : ' The spirit 
has declared her guilty; the spirit never lies.'" A 
story, dating from 1719, of self-moving objects is 
told in Tylor's Primitive Culture? " A Russian 
merchant in Tibet, who had lost some goods, 
complained to the Kutuchtu Lama, who thereupon 
ordered one of the Lamas to take a four-footed 
bench which, after being turned by him in several 
directions, pointed to the tent where the goods were 

1 Vol. ii., p. 156 (1891 edition). 



EXPLANATORY 81 

hidden. He then mounted astride the bench and 
it carried him to the tent where the stolen things 
were discovered." A similar story, also from Tibet, 
is told of a Lama finding stolen objects by the 
help of a table which flew forty feet, spun round, 
and fell on the earth, the direction in which it 
fell indicating where the things would be found. 

As for raps, the same authority cites examples 
from travel books showing that the modern Dyaks, 
Siamese, Singalese and Esths alike believe that 
rappings are caused by spirits. 1 " Suppose," he 
adds, " a wild North American Indian looking on at 
a spirit seance in London. As to the presence of 
disembodied spirits, manifesting themselves by raps, 
noises, voices and other physical actions, the savage 
would be perfectly at home in the proceedings, for 
such things are part and parcel of his recognised 
system of nature. The part of the affair really 
strange to him would be the introduction of such 
acts as spelling and writing, which do belong to a 
different civilisation from his." 2 

The Russian peasant sets aside a portion of his 
supper for the Domovoy, or house spirit, who, if 
neglected, waxes wroth and knocks the table and 
benches about at night. 3 Franconian damsels go to 
a tree on St. Thomas's Day and knock three times 
on it to find out by the answer given by the rappings 
of the tree spirit who is to be their husband. In 
Wales there is a species called knockers, who were 
said to point out the rich veins of silver and lead. 

1 Primitive Culture. Vol. i., p. 145. 

2 Ibid.„ vol, i., p. 156. 

8 Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, p. 123. 



82 THE QUESTION 

Grose, in his correspondence with Baxter, describes 
the miners of the Island of Lewis as little statured 
and about half-a-yard long, and adds " that at this 
very instant there are miners on a discovery of a 
vein of metal on his own lands, and that two of them 
are ready to make oath they have heard these 
knockers in the daytime." 1 

The rapping-alphabet 2 is no modern device of 
the spirits. Anent this, Reginald Scot tells a story 
in his Discoverie of Witchcraft. He precedes it by 
"citing one conjuration (of which sort I might cite 
a hundred) published by Jacobus de Chusa, a great 
doctor of the Romish Church, which serveth to find 
out the cause of noise and spiritual rumbling in 
houses, churches, or chappels and to conjure walk- 
ing spirits ... if the spirit make anie sound of 
voice or knocking . . . he is the conjurer." Then 
follows a series of questions to be put to him. 
" This must be doone in the night. . . . But that 
in truth such things are commonlie put in practice 
I will here set down an instance latelie and trulie, 
but lewdlie performed." 3 

On the death of the wife of the Mayor of Orleans, 
in 1534, her husband ordered that she should be 
buried without " anie pompe or noise," whereby 
Franciscan monks were deprived of their customary 
extortions. So they plotted with one Coliman, a 
conjurer, as to means of revenge by which they 
might frighten the Mayor into the belief " that his 
wife was damned for ever." They brought into the 

1 Brand's Pop. Antiquities. Vol. iii., p. 25. (Ed. Hazlitt.) 

2 In his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, vol. ii., p. 159, Prince Kropotkin 
describes the knocking-alphabet by which the prisoners in the fortress 
of St. Peter and St. Paul communicated. s Pp. 366-368. 



EXPLANATORY 83 

plot a novice, whom they hid " over the arches of 
the church to make a great rumbling about midnight 
when they came to mumble their praiers as they 
were woont to do." This done, they asked some of 
the citizens, not including the Mayor, to attend " at 
mattens," and when these had arrived " the counter- 
feit spirit began to make a marvellous noise in the 
top of the church." Thereupon the monks asked 
him to make known " by signes to certeine things 
they would demand of him. Now there was a hole 
in the vawt through the which he might hear Coli- 
man's voice, and then had he in his hand a little 
boord which, at everie question, he strake." They 
asked him several questions ; "at the last they 
name the Maior's wife and there by and by the 
spirit gave a signe that he was her soul. He was 
further asked whether he were damned or no, and if 
he were, for what cause." Then followed a string of 
questions, which he " affirmed or denied according 
as he strake the boord twice or thrice together." 
Twice he struck the board to the leading question, 
when the congregation dispersed after a request 
from the monks " that they would beare witnesse of 
those things which they had seene with their eies." 
The story came to the bishop's ears and he required 
the monks to choose some of their number "to go 
up into the top of the vawt and there to see whether 
any ghost appeered or not," but their leader objected, 
" affirming that the spirit in no wise ought to be 
troubled." Meanwhile the Mayor, who saw through 
the trick, appealed to the king, who had the rascals 
brought to Paris. In vain they " vaunted them- 
selves on their privileges " — benefit of clergy — they 



84 THE QUESTION 

were condemned to imprisonment in Orleans " to 
be brought foorth into the cheefe church of the citie 
and from thence to the place of execution." 

The Fox girls — appropriate name for these 
cunning hussies — were detected in February, 1851, 
three years after the Hydeville performances, by 
three professors in the University of Buffalo, all 
medical men, as producing the raps by knocking 
their knee-joints together. In their report they 
add: " We have heard of a person who can develop 
knockings from the ankle, of several who can pro- 
duce noises with the joints of the toes and fingers, 
of one who can render loudly audible the shoulder, 
and another the hip joint. We have also heard of 
two additional cases in which sounds are produced 
by the knee-joint." Confessions from the Fox girls 
and other mediums followed in April. They showed 
a relative, Mrs. Norman Culver, how to produce the 
raps, in which she said that she soon found herself 
an expert. All the toes were used. When a com- 
mittee at Rochester tested her genuineness by hold- 
ing Katie Fox's ankles, the raps still went on. She 
was in collusion with the servant, who rapped with 
her knuckles under the floor from the cellar. 1 

As for the Stratford disturbances, the report on 
them is practically valueless, because it was not set 
down by a son of Dr. Phelps's till thirty years later, 
and then at second hand, since he was no witness 

1 In his reference to the Fox girls (see ante, p. 36) Mr. Sinnett 
disingenuously makes no reference to this admission, perhaps because 
they appear to have recanted. He and those who share his amazing 
gullibility must reconcile this, as best they can, with the deposition 
which was made by Mrs. Norman Culver before a magistrate in April, 
1851. 



EXPLANATORY 85 

of what he affirms happened. The testimony of 
Andrew Jackson Davis to their genuineness as the 
eager efforts of spirits to hold communion with that 
particular family has been cited. But he was 
careful to qualify this by suggesting as a possible 
explanation that " the spirits had employed some 
impressible person in the family to write some of 
the communications and also to arrange the ex- 
pressive tableaux." For " impressible " the term 
" irrepressible " may more truly explain the cause of 
the phenomena, since Dr. Phelps's son, Harry, was 
so plagued by " spirits " at his school that he was 
sent back to his reverend father, when there were no 
more happenings of outgrowths of mystically in- 
scribed turnips from carpets, or waltzings of fire- 
irons. Candour must add that Davis himself had a 
somewhat shady record — " the badge of all his tribe " 
— despite his being an honoured recipient of com- 
munications which contain such revealed nonsense 
as descriptions of " systems moving in concentric 
circles round a Great Eternal Centre pregnated with 
the immutable eternal essence of Divine Positive 
Power." 

A thirst for sensational notoriety and the love of 
being talked about go far to explain the " super- 
fluity of naughtiness " which begot the senseless 
tomfooleries upsetting households and bewildering 
the inmates. For the most part they are the pranks 
of flighty " electric " x girls, often highly strung, 
bored, it may well be, by the cramping monotony 
of their homes, especially in isolated country dis- 

1 America, ever resourceful, supplies examples of these. See Pod- 
more's Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 43. 



86 THE QUESTION 

tricts; withal, having a strong vein of cunning in 
their natures and made by repression more liable to 
hysteria. They are of the stuff of which neurotic 
mediums are made; therefore among the cases of 
mental pathology of which Spiritualism supplies 
numerous and various examples. It is often a toss- 
up whether such natures add to the list of anaemic 
mystics or of fraudulent mediums. Further com- 
ment is needless in face of the fact that, as a result 
of an investigation by the Society for Psychical 
Research into these poltergeist cases, the evidence 
was positive that tricky little boys and girls were at 
the bottom of the mischief, " the onlookers accepting 
the portents as manifestations of supernormal 
powers." The disturbances are nearly always 
traceable to a child, generally to a girl in whom 
there has often been abnormality or disease. 1 

The marvels exhibited by that " variety artist," 
D. D. Home, are not so easily disposed of. The 
attestations of distinguished men of science and 
other high-class witnesses to their genuineness give 
pause to pronouncement of judgment; the more so, 
as already stated, because he was never detected in 

1 Proc. S.P.R. Vol. xii., pp. 45-115 (1896). In his article on 
" Spiritualism " in Chambers's Encyclopaedia the late Dr. A. R. Wallace 
cites, among the evidences attesting it, the " Extraordinary occurrences " 
in the house of a Mr. Jobson in Sunderland in 1839. The daughter 
Mary, a girl of thirteen, was attacked by a mysterious illness, accom- 
panied by raps and knocks and other seemingly mysterious happenings 
of the poltergeist sort, whose supernormal character, Dr. Wallace says, 
" was authenticated by sixteen witnesses, including five physicians and 
surgeons." Two of the lay witnesses told how she discoursed on heavenly 
things, which in the judgment of Dr. Clanny, a Fellow of the Royal 
Society, proved angelic inspiration, while others testified how at her 
bidding they saw, as it were, heaven opened. To-day the S.P.R. would 
include Mary Jobson in the list of neuropaths. 



EXPLANATORY 87 

fraud. The one man who said that he was an im- 
postor was no physicist, but the poet who wrote 
Mr. Sludge, " The Medium " — Robert Browning. 

Through the agency of rising and tilting tables, of 
self-played accordions and guitars, of rappings, of 
spirit hands and spirit lights, those whom Home 
gathered round him believed themselves brought 
into the glorious company of invisible immortals; 
the more so when, in addition, spiritual messages 
and counsel from the medium's " control " further 
proved the communion of saints. 

"As for religion — why, I served it, sir! 
I'll stick to that! With my phenomena 
I laid the atheist sprawling on his back 
And propped Saint Paul up, or, at least, Swedenborg! 
In fact, it's just the proper way to balk 
These troublesome fellows — liars, one and all, 
Are not these sceptics? Well, to baffle them, 
No use in being squeamish : lie yourself ! " * 

Home's sitters were not " paying guests." He 
was host; he chose his own company. He assigned 
each one his place; those who had the greater faith 
in him were rewarded by being put nearest to him. 
He was absolute master of the position. If test 
experiments were suggested, he imposed the con- 
ditions. Dimmed, sometimes wholly extinguished, 
lights were a necessary part of these conditions. 
Even when the lights are not low, marvels may be 
accepted as supernormal, because the untrained, 
sympathetic onlooker, keen as he may think him- 
self in quickness of observation, is a child in the 
hands of the expert conjurer. Mr. Podmore, who 

1 Mr. Sludge, " The Medium." 



88 THE QUESTION 

had none of the child's simplicity in his texture, 
tells that when meeting a man who claimed to 
possess a peculiar magnetic force by which he could 
attract iron, he " accepted in all good faith the 
phenomenon." The man placed a poker upright 
on its knob between his outstretched knees, then it 
swayed to one side or the other, following only, as it 
seemed, the movements of his finger. Mr. Podmore 
afterwards learned that the trick was accomplished 
by means of a loop of human hair attached to the 
humbug's trousers. Trained prestidigitateurs can 
do a lot with human hair and black thread! 

In June, 1871, Sir William Crookes, experiment- 
ing on the alteration in the weight of a body with a 
delicately constructed apparatus, and putting Home 
to the test, he, presumably, not being in contact 
with the table on which the machine was placed, 
found that the balance, which had a self -registering 
index, was affected three pounds, sometimes more 
than that. Sir William concluded that this demon- 
strated the existence of a " hitherto unknown force " 
for the ebb and flow of which Home was assumed 
to be accountable! He was convinced that Home's 
feet and hands were too well guarded to manipulate 
the machine. But as Omar Khayyam says: 

"A Hair, perhaps, divides the False and True"; 

and here Home again prescribed the conditions 
of the experiment, his dexterity devising means 
of attachment to the apparatus. 1 The same experi- 
ment, satisfying him as to the " unknown force," 
was tried by Sir William on " a fascinating blonde 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 237. 



EXPLANATORY 89 

American medium," Annie Eva Fay. Perhaps, in 
her case, it may suffice to say that, after displaying 
her powers, in which she had the help of her husband, 
" Colonel " Fay, to wondering audiences, she was 
exposed by Mr. Maskelyne. She offered, if he 
would pay her a certain sum, to appear on his stage 
at the Egyptian Hall, to show how all her tricks 
were done. The offer was declined as superfluous. 1 

The conjurer can manipulate freely, especially 

1 The Supernatural?, p. 194, By L. A. Weatherly, M.D., and J. N. 
Maskelyne. 

Forty-two years have passed since Sir William Crookes announced 
that he had proved the existence of a "hitherto unknown force." And 
now, while the proof sheets of this book are in hand, there comes to 
me a copy of Light, of 21st July, 1917, and of The World, of 27th idem, 
each journal giving a summary of experiments by Mr. W. J. Craw- 
ford, D. Sc, of Belfast, the result of these being to satisfy him as to 
the existence of " a form of matter unknown to science." It issues, we 
are told, from the body in the shape of " psychic rods," invisible and 
impalpable, but ponderable. The apparatus employed in the experi- 
ment are: 1. A weighing machine. 2. A board placed on the platform 
of the machine. 3. A chair placed on the board. The medium sits on 
the chair and rests her feet on the board. The " intelligent control " 
(i.e. the assumed spirit) is asked to take out matter from the medium's 
body to be used in making a cantilever whereby to levitate a table with 
which the medium is, apparently, not in contact. The " control " is 
to give three raps when the operation is complete. The weight of the 
medium slowly decreases in proportion to the power of the raps — 
sometimes as much as fifty-four and a half pounds — while the table is 
raised from one to two feet. Ultimately, the abstracted matter flies 
back into the body of the medium. The lady through whom these 
wonders are manifest is a Miss Kathleen Goligher, the eldest daughter 
of a family whose members are Spiritualists. " They make," Sir 
W. F. Barrett tells us, in his On the Threshold of the Unseen (p. 46), 
"a sort of religious ceremony of their sittings, always opening with 
prayers and hymns." Although these pietistic preliminaries have naught 
to do with the genuineness or spuriousness of phenomena at "spirit 
circles," they have often been coverings of fraud, and they lend an air 
of suspicion to the seances of the Goligher household. It would be 
well if Sir W. F. Barrett would arrange to bring the young lady and 
the apparatus ip London for suimiission to a series of scientific tests 



90 THE QUESTION 

when he can with one foot and one hand do the work 
of the two feet and hands. Thus does an atmos- 
phere of scepticism and suspicion invest the whole 
business. 

But levitation, elongation and the fire ordeal are 
not thus explicable. As for levitation, we fall back, 
as in crystallomancy and other " spiritual " pheno- 
mena, on precedents and parallels from the history 
of illusions. The late Dr. Wallace's capacious 
oesophagus swallowed all the stories of saints and 
butlers wafted into " the central blue." " What 
for instance," he says, " can be a more striking 
miracle than the levitation or raising of the human 
body into the air without visible cause, yet this 
fact has been testified to during a long series of 
centuries." " We all know," he adds, " that at 
least fifty persons of high character may be found 
in London who will testify that they have seen the 
same thing happen to Mr. Home." x [This was 
written in 1871.] The " facts come from all ages 
and sources; they fill a large space in the history 
of hallucinations. In past times the handling of 
fire and walking through the fire, and the levitation 
of the body have been recorded of many persons in 
many parts of the world." What, asks Sir W. F. 
Barrett, "can be said of these miracles? They are 
so foreign to ordinary experience that even the 
testimony of numerous and distinguished witnesses 

at the hands of biologists and other experts, among whom Mr. Devant 
might be included with advantage on the principle of setting a con- 
jurer to catch a conjurer. Science knows no finality, but it must have 
conclusive evidence before it accepts the existence of " a form of mat- 
ter hitherto unknown " among the properties of the human body. 
1 Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, pp. 7, 8. 



EXPLANATORY 91 

fails to carry conviction to the majority of readers. 
And yet it is impossible to reject the evidence, and 
it seems inconceivable that so many critical and 
sceptical observers were all mistaken or the victims 
of hallucination." 1 Then follows a list of notable 
men, including " that great exposer of humbugs," 
the late Professor De Morgan. 

There was a still greater " exposer of humbugs," 
who flourished in the second century of the Christian 
era, Lucian of Samosata. In his dialogue, The 
Liar, wherein the superstitions of his time are 
lashed, Tychiades chaffs Ion over some wonder tale, 
when " Cleodemus put in : ' Ah, you will have your 
joke; I was an unbeliever myself once — worse than 
you. I held out for a long time, but all my scruples 
were overcome the first time I saw the Flying 
Stranger: a Hyperborean he was; I have his own 
word for it. There was no more to be said after 
that: there he was, travelling through the air in 
broad daylight, walking on the water, or strolling 
through fire, perfectly at his ease.' ' What,' I 
exclaimed, * you saw this Hyperborean actually fly- 
ing and walking on water?' 'I did: he wore 
brogues, as the Hyperboreans usually do. I need 
not detain you with the everyday manifestations of 
his power: how he would make people fall in love, 
call up spirits, resuscitate corpses, bring down the 
moon, and show you Hecate herself, as large as 
life.' " 2 

Iamblichus, a Neoplatonist of the fourth century, 
was, like Virgil, and with as little reason, reputed 

1 Psychical Research, p. 218. 

3 The Works of Lucian. Vol. iii., p. 237. (Fowler's trans.) 



92 THE QUESTION 

to be a magician. Among the wonders told of him 
is his being levitated ten cubits from the ground 
while in the act of prayer. His disciples asked him 
why he who could do such things himself did not 
let them do likewise. Then laughingly he replied: 
" It was no fool who tricked you thus, but the thing 
is not true." * 

Stories of levitation specially gather round St. 
Philip Neri, St. Dunstan, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. 
Theresa, and many others whose names are written 
in the Acta Sanctorum. Similar legends come from 
the East, adding to the list Gautama the Buddha 
and his disciples, and also Brahmins, who levitated 
so as to perform more completely the solar rites. 2 
Famous, and nearer our own time, is the levitation 
of the Franciscan monk, St. Joseph of Copertino, 
who lived in the seventeenth century. He was 
often raised in the air, remaining there till called 
back by the General of his order. Despite old age, 
his eagerness to soar caused him to take a short 
flight on the day before he died. 3 

In his Sadducismus Triumphatis, a storehouse of 
levitation and other legends (1681), Glanvil tells of 
a bewitched lad living at Shepton Mallet who was 
seen to rise in the air thirty yards. At other times 
he was seen, fly-like, with the palms of his hands 
flat against a beam in the ceiling of his bedroom. 
Nine people testified to seeing this, and on their 

1 Primitive Culture. Vol. i., p. 151. 

2 Among the Yakut tribes of Siberia it was an old belief that the 
shamans really did ascend into the sky and on their return to earth 
related what they had seen. Aboriginal Siberia, p. 238. By M. A. 
Czaplicka. 

s Old Calabria, p. 76. By Norman Douglas. 



EXPLANATORY 93 

evidence Jane Brisks, the witch who played these 
tricks, was condemned and executed at Chard 
Assizes in March, 1658. * Another possessed man, 
Richard, a Surrey demoniac, was hoisted into the 
air and let down by the devil. Glanvil also tells 
the story of the aerostatic butler who, in the pres- 
ence of Lord Orrery and Mr. Greatrakes, the 
" Stroaker," at Lord Surrey's house at Ragley, in 
Ireland, was lifted by fairies and floated above their 
heads. Skipping the centuries, in 1864, seven years 
before Mrs. Guppy's redoubtable flight, a demoniac 
was suspended for some minutes in the air above 
the cemetery at Morzine, in Savoy, by a mysterious 
force; and this in the presence of the Archbishop. 
The one recorded levitation of the Rev. Stainton 
Moses is found in the diary of his very credu- 
lous friend, Dr. Speers, and has confirmation — 
quantum valeat — from Moses himself. Sir William 
Crookes, Lord Lindsay, Viscount Adare and Cap- 
tain Wynne are in agreement as to having seen 
Home " in the air supported by nothing visible." 
The last three are in accord as to his floating through 
an open window into the outside air and coming 
through another open window into the room adjoin- 
ing, the distance between the two windows being 
about seven feet, and " not the slightest foothold 
between them." There was full moonshine in the 
room where the three were sitting. Home glided in 
feet foremost and sat down. That was on the 16th 

1 It may be well to remind the reader that six years later two poor 
creatures, Amy Duny and Rose Cullender, were hanged at Bury St. 
Edmunds, mainly on the judgment of Sir Thomas Browne. " I have 
ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches." — Religio 
Medici (written in 1635). Works, vol. i., p. 45 (1904 edition). 



94 THE QUESTION 

December, 1868, at 5 Buckingham Gate, London. 
Nine years afterwards, a lapse of time that may- 
impair even a good memory, Captain Wynne wrote 
to Home as follows: — "The fact of your having 
gone out of the one window and in at the other I 
can swear to." x But the accounts of the observers 
differ. The moon was only two days old; hence 
her light would not count: Lord Lindsay says that 
Home floated horizontally, Lord Adare that he 
floated vertically, and there are other discrepancies 
in detail. But these pale before the larger issues of 
the story. The naked facts are that what is said to 
have happened took place in the dark, that Lord 
Lindsay, sitting with his back to the window, saw 
a shadow cast by a wisp of moonlight which bias 
and expectancy united to envisage as Home. Mr. 
Podmore, always alert in his analysis of evidence, 
suggests that Home, " having noiselessly opened 
the window in the next room, slipped back under 
cover of darkness into the seance room, got behind 
the curtain, opened the window and stepped on to 
the window ledge." 2 As bearing on the question of 
ocular illusion which plays so large a part in this 
and kindred matters, the late Professor Newcombe, 
who was President of the American branch of the 
Society for Psychical Research, says: "It is a 
familiar fact of physiological optics that, in a faint 
light, if the eyes are fixed on an object the latter 
gradually becomes clouded and finally disappears 
entirely. Then it requires only a little heightening 
of a not unusual imagination to believe that if the 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 256. 
s Newer Spiritualism, p. 72. 



EXPLANATORY 95 

object that disappeared was a man he wafted him- 
self through the air and went out of the window." * 

It is not given to man to share in the full advan- 
tages of the Felidse in dilation of his pupils in the 
dark ; hence the fundamental drawback to the value of 
what he sees or thinks and affirms that he then saw. 
But a Mr. Enmore Jones appears to have had the 
exceptional advantage of seeing, in a well-lighted 
room, Home rise one foot above the floor. Mr. 
Jones also saw his aged mother, surely inconsider- 
ately, raised, together with the chair on which she 
sat, to the level of the table top. That is what Mr. 
Enmore Jones said. 

The list of levitations would seem to have been 
complete with the records of Mrs. Guppy (who fills 
spiritually, as well as physically, a large space in the 
occult), Mr. Moses and Mr. Home. But it has, or 
may have, additions. A certain " Judge X," report- 
ing on some poltergeist frolics in Windsor, Nova 
Scotia, in 1907, when a hogshead turned somersaults 
and articles flew from shops into the streets, says: 
" I think that the ' invisibles ' are contemplating 
levitating one or more persons; the power here is 
so great, and there are so many unconscious physi- 
cal mediums here that I should not be surprised 
if one or more persons should be levitated on to 
one of the principal buildings." 2 

These defiances of the uniformity of nature bring 
to mind the story that when Sydney Smith met an 
old college chum who had become a bishop he said: 

1 Nineteenth Century, January, 1909, p. 139. 

' Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 6. By Hereward Car- 
rington. 



96 THE QUESTION 

" Well, my lord, your career and mine contradict 
a universal law: you have risen by your gravity, 
and I have fallen by my levity." 

There are several witnesses to Home's elongation. 
The extent of this is reported to have varied at 
different times from four to eleven inches. In this 
he is said to have been exceeded by another medium 
named Peters, who, by the aid of his " control," a 
Red Indian, was elongated eighteen inches. How 
far that constant factor, bad observation in an 
obscure light, led men of integrity — Lord Lindsay 
and Lord Adare — to be convinced, the one that he 
saw Home elongated when in the trance state, and 
the other that Home seemed to grow at both ends 
and then contract to his normal height, the reader 
must judge for himself. Assuming that the phe- 
nomenon occurred, one can only ask, as did the 
mathematician after reading Paradise Lost — " what 
does it prove?" — about a spiritual world? 

The phenomenon of the fire ordeal is not to be 
thus summarily dismissed. It is no monopoly of 
mediums; much of interest about it is to be 
gathered from the Shadrachs, Meshachs and Abed- 
negos among savage people, and from European 
and Oriental jugglers. Among the latter it has 
degenerated into clever trickery; but among the 
lower races a significance, obscure, perchance sacred, 
as a survival of ancient rites, attaches to it. 

Vedic records, dating from 1200 B.C., tell of a 
holiness competition between two Brahmins, the 
test being walking through fire. The one who 
passed through unscorched was adjudged the holier. 
The antiquity of the fire ordeal has example in the 



EXPLANATORY 97 

same sacred books. A suspected witness had to 
clear himself by holding hot iron unscathed, and an 
accused wife to prove her innocence by walking 
immune through fire. Iamblichus, writing in the 
fourth century, tells of certain priests that the god 
within them does not let fire harm them. But this 
explanation does not carry us much further. The 
best known classical example of the rite is supplied 
by the Hirpi Sorani (perhaps meaning Solar wolves) 
of Mount Soracte, 1 performed by them in propitia- 
tion of Feronia, probably a goddess of fire or wild 
beasts, by leaping over burnt piles. Arruns, speak- 
ing through Virgil, calls on the " Highest of gods, 
Apollo, guardian of holy Soracte, whom first we 
honour, for whom is fed the blaze of pine piled up, 
whose votaries we, passing through the fire in the 
strength of our piety, press the soles of our feet on 
many a burning coal." 2 In Bulgaria the Nistin- 
ares or " ministrants " hold an annual festival, when 
huge fires are lighted and Nistinare after Nistinare, 
wound up to frenzy by wild dancing, climbs the 
pyre on his naked feet, made immune, as is the 
common belief, by the gods. Their divine gift is 
hereditary; so it is with an old Spanish family 
" who from father to son have the power of going 
into the flames without being burned and who, by 
dint of charms permitted by the Inquisition, can 

1 The reference recalls the joy with which Horace bade the heaping 
of the logs on the hearth of his Sabine villa as he looked on snow-clad 
Soracte (nive candidum). Carm., Book I., ix.: 

"... draw the wine we ask, 
That mellower vintage, four-year-old, 
From out the cellar'd Sabine cask." 

' JUneid. Book XI., pp. 780-784. (Lonsdale's and Lee's trans.) 



98 THE QUESTION 

extinguish fires." Of the several accounts furnished 
by travellers, that by Dr. Hocken and Dr. Colqu- 
houn, of Dunedin, may be taken as applicable to the 
many stories of savages who walk unharmed through 
fire. The feat was exhibited on an island of the 
Fijian group. In an open space in the forest a 
saucer-shaped oven, about twenty-five feet across, 
had been dug out and filled with stones made white- 
hot by burning logs. These were dragged away by 
the natives and then, amidst yells from the crowd 
of spectators, some seven or eight naked-footed men 
walked in single file down the slope, then across 
the stones, returning uninjured. 1 Like the famous 
three, bound and " cast into the burning fiery 
furnace " by Nebuchadnezzar, upon their bodies the 
fire had no power, " nor the smell of fire passed on 
them." 2 Similar stories come from China, Japan, 
the Straits Settlements, India, Trinidad, New 
Zealand and elsewhere. 3 Perhaps the case in which 
the performer went " one better " than Home is that 
of a Huron medicine-man, who heated a stone red- 
hot, put it in his mouth and ran round the cabin 
with it. His lips and tongue bore no trace of burn 
or blister, but the stone gave evidence of having 
" been bitten into," so the worthy witness, one 
Father Lejeune, reports. 4 

1 Magic and Religion, p. 285. By Andrew Lang. 

(In the twelfth chapter of his Modern Mythology, Mr. Lang 
supplies numerous examples of fire walking and fire handling.) 

2 Daniel iii. 27. 

s " It would be difficult to describe all the tricks performed by the 
shamans; some of the commonest are the swallowing of burning coals, 
setting oneself free from a cord by which one is bound, etc." — 
Aboriginal Siberia, p. 233. By M. A. Czaplicka. 

* Cock Lane and Common Sense, p. 49. By Andrew Lang. 



EXPLANATORY 99 

As a man may fearlessly plunge his hand into 
molten lead, the moisture on his skin protecting 
him from burning, so red-hot coal may be held in 
the bare hand. Uncle Remus, to the wonder of the 
little boy, " picked up a live coal of fire in his fingers, 
transferred it to the palm of his hand and thence to 
his clay pipe, which he had been filling." * But 
when Sir William Crookes applied the fire test to the 
foot of a thick-skinned African, his house — the late 
Andrew Lang is my authority for this — smelt of 
roast negro! How the fire-walkers perform their 
task uninjured nobody knows. My friend, the late 
Sir B. W. Richardson, suggested that diluted 
sulphuric acid might be used as a protective, but 
as Mr. Lang pointed out when I named this to 
him, that article is not in use among barbaric 
peoples! He suggested my trying the experiment 
on myself! Possibly the stones are rapid heat 
radiators — formed of a substance which quickly 
parts with its heat; and it is also suggested that 
the natives possess some secret of a substance pro- 
ducing a profound sweat which renders the soles 
of the feet immune. Dr. Wallace says that the 
phenomenon " is inexplicable by the known laws 
of physiology and heat," so the convenient deus 
ex machind is again eagerly invoked and brought 
into play by spiritualists. 

To sum up the impressions produced by the records 
of the feats ascribed to Home — with the genuineness 
or spuriousness of which, as already stated, Mr. Pod- 
more contends that " the main defences of Spiritual- 
ism must stand or fall " — a cogent explanation of his 

1 P. 12 (Routledge's edition). 



100 THE QUESTION 

success lies in his personal magnetism. His air of 
openness and sincerity begot implicit trust. What- 
ever seemed to throw light on the question of pos- 
sible communication with a spirit world was eagerly 
clutched at by all his disciples, and their faith in him 
was further strengthened by his religious attitude. 
This deepened their conviction that he was no im- 
postor. Even the employment, at the outset, of the 
stock-in-trade of the conjurer — spirit voices blended 
with music from guitars, spirit hands clasping 
knees and scattering flowers — begot no suspicion of 
his integrity among the credulous whom he honoured 
with invitations to his seances. 

The evidence as to levitation — the most impres- 
sive of all the reputed physical phenomena — has no 
value in face of the impossible demands which it 
makes on our intelligence. It is suspect as the 
outcome of the mental attitude of the sitters 
towards the wonderful, and as fostered by expect- 
ancy, which is one of the main factors of hallucina- 
tions and sense deceptions. In the case of Sir 
William Crookes, defective eyesight may explain 
his belief, since, as the late Sir William Ramsay 
said to me, " He's so shortsighted that, despite his 
unquestioned honesty, he cannot be trusted in what 
he tells you he has seen." 

In the hands of ecclesiastics, deriving their 
authority from a passage in the Gospels, binding 
and loosing have passed from the symbolic to the 
real, and become engines of power over the fate of 
men in the world visible and invisible. And the 
realism has extended to their service to Spiritual- 



EXPLANATORY 101 

ism. Here once more the savage and the spiritual- 
ist are at one in attributing the untying trick to the 
action of supernormal powers, that is, in Dr. Wal- 
lace's words, " to some undiscovered law of nature." 
The seer or sorcerer who is believed to be inspired is 
bound or swathed mummy-like, perhaps, so Andrew 
Lang suggests, as symbolising the dead with whom he 
is to have communion. The Greenland " angekok," 
before taking a journey to the unseen world, 
is bound with his head between his legs and 
his hands behind his back by one of his 
pupils. His house is darkened so that his move- 
ments are unseen, and by-and-by he appears un- 
bound: the spirits have loosened his bonds. The 
Samoyed "shaman" lets himself be tightly bound; 
he shuts himself in his hut, when voices are heard, 
" bears growl, snakes hiss and squirrels leap about 
the room." After a while the shaman walks in free 
and unbound from the outside! The voices and the 
noises are believed by the onlookers to be those of 
spirits who untied the shaman's bonds. 1 Similar 
tricks are played by Red Indian and other jugglers. 
The Davenport Brothers were released to the accom- 
paniment of music from stringed instruments and 
hand-bells, sometimes to the sound of a speaking- 
trumpet. The discussion which their performances 
evoked caused the appointment of a committee 
selected from an audience at Liverpool. Two of 
the chosen, who knew the secret of a special knot, 
called Tom Fool's knot, applied it to the wrists of 
the Brothers, when each protested that the knot 

1 Primitive Culture. Vol. i., p. 155. The examples are taken by 
Tylor from the works of the travellers Cranz and Castren. 



102 THE QUESTION 

was unfairly tied and injured the circulation. A 
doctor, summoned to give his opinion, said that the 
knot was not harmful. But the Davenports re- 
fused to go on with the performance; their chap- 
lain, Ferguson, was ordered to cut the knots, and 
there was an end for the time being to the 
Brothers' exhibitions, but not to their dupes. The 
late Mr. Maskelyne admitted that the instantaneous 
tying and untying was simply marvellous, and it 
utterly baffled everyone to discover, until on one 
occasion (he does not give the place and date) the 
accidental slipping down of a curtain in the interior 
of the cabinet let him into the secret. 1 

When the wind had blown over, they returned to 
this country in 1868, at the instance of a believer, 
who induced the Anthropological Society to examine 
their claim to supernormal powers. But again the 
Brothers refused to comply with the conditions on 
which a committee of the society insisted as pre- 
liminary to the investigation. It was only proper, 
they rightly argued, that the Davenports should 
allow their hands to be held, to have colouring 
matter daubed on them, and in other ways justify 
their contentions that spirits unloosed their bonds. 
To all this they said " Nay." 

Some months after, to quote from Mr. Podmore, 
" when Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook gave at the 
Crystal Palace a performance in imitation of that 

1 The Supernatural? , p. 190. In his suggestive Modern Man and his 
Forerunners, Mr. Spurrell tells of the deftness of a chimpanzee in 
untying difficult knots. He says: "In spite of some experience of ropes 
picked up whilst I was attached to a ship, I found that I could not 
secure the chimpanzee to the veranda post by any knot which she could 
not quite easily unravel." P. 28. 



EXPLANATORY 103 

given by the Davenports, some spiritualists, amongst 
them Benjamin Coleman [an early believer], found 
the imitation so complete that they saw no escape 
from the conclusion that Maskelyne and Cook were 
themselves spirit mediums." 1 Again and again 
converts of Coleman's type have found refuge from 
the irrefutable in that explanation. " And for this 
cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they 
should believe a lie." 2 

The same fatuous argument was used when the 
late S. J. Davey showed how the sorry rascals, 
Slade and Eglinton, worked the oracle in spirit 
writing — and in broad daylight. The public needs 
telling what few may be old enough to remember, 
that in 1876 S lade's imposture was detected by Sir 
E. Ray Lankester and Sir H. B. Donkin, with 
the result that he was put into the dock and 
sentenced to three months imprisonment with hard 
labour. A defect in the indictment enabled him to 
make a successful appeal, and he left the country 
before a fresh summons, remedying the omission, 
could be issued. As for Eglinton, he was also de- 
tected in fraud. His later role was to exhibit the 
newer phenomenon of materialised spirits, but his 
career was cut short by the discovery in his port- 
manteau of some muslin and a false beard which 
matched the muslin and hair cut surreptitiously a 
few days previously from the materialised spirit of 
"Abdullah." The tint of his shady record was 

1 Modem Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 61. 

Before the death of one of the brothers in 1884, both had confessed 
to trickery in their performances. The survivor settled in America as 
a farmer. 

2 2 Thessalonians ii. 11. 



104 THE QUESTION 

further blackened by his having been detected in 
colluding with Madame Blavatsky in sending an 
" astral " letter from a ship in mid-ocean. In his 
Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism, Mr. Hereward 
Carrington, an adept at disclosing spiritualistic 
chicanery, but, strangely enough, believing in a 
residuum of genuine phenomena, describes how the 
spirit-writing trick is worked. 

The inquirer goes to a medium, pays his fee, is 
handed a blank pad and writes his question on it. 
He tears off the top sheet and puts it in his pocket. 
The medium takes away the pad and in a few 
minutes returns with a written answer from the 
spirit. Underneath the top sheet was a layer of 
carbon paper, on which, of course, the reproduced 
question could be read. To defeat possible trickery, 
the inquirer may prefer to use his own paper, and 
the medium will be asked, or will actually volunteer, 
to withdraw while the question is being written. 
But that wily man is not to be baffled. The table 
has an oil-cloth cover, under which is carbon paper, 
and under that is a sheet of thin white silk which the 
medium withdraws with the carbon copy through the 
hollow leg of the table fixed in a hole in the ceiling 
of the room below, and then reads the question. 

The trick is at least eighteen hundred years old. 
The " arch scoundrel," Alexander of Abonoteichos, 
as Lucian calls that famous medium of the second 
century, " proclaimed that on a stated day the god 
would give answers to all comers. Each person 
was to write down his wish and the object of his 
curiosity, fasten the packet with thread and seal 
it with wax, clay, or other such substance. He 



EXPLANATORY 105 

[Alexander] would receive these and enter the holy 
place, whither the givers should be summoned in 
order by a herald and an acolyte. He would learn 
the god's mind upon each, and return the packets 
with their seals intact and the answers attached, 
the gods being ready to give a definite answer to 
any question that might be put. The trick here was 
one which would be seen through easily enough by 
a person of your intelligence (or, if I may say so 
without violating modesty, of my own), but which 
to the ordinary imbecile would have the persuasive- 
ness of what is marvellous and incredible. He con- 
trived various methods of undoing the seals, read 
the questions, answered them as seemed good, and 
then folded, sealed, and returned them, to the great 
astonishment of the recipients. And then it was: 
' How could he possibly know what I gave him, 
carefully secured under a seal that defies imitation, 
unless he was a true god, with a god's omni- 
science?'" Lucian goes on to explain the methods 
of this " triple rogue," narration of whose impudent 
frauds fills the letter to his witty friend Celsus, 
famous author of a powerful polemic against 
Christianity. Lucian adds : " So oracles and divine 
utterances were the order of the day, and much 
shrewdness Alexander displayed, eking out me- 
chanical ingenuity with obscurity, his answers to 
some being crabbed and ambiguous, and to others 
absolutely unintelligible." x 

To return to the enfant terrible, Mr. Davey. He 
had been a quasi-convert to the extent that he 

1 " Alexander the Oracle-Monger." Works of Lucian. Vol. ii., pp. 
221, 222. (Fowler's translation.) 



106 THE QUESTION 

expressed a " belief that the idea of trickery or 
jugglery in slate-writing communications is out of 
the question." But certain happenings at Eglin- 
ton's sittings awoke suspicion, and, being an adept 
amateur conjurer, he got at the secret of the dodges. 
He then arranged with the late Dr. Hodgson, then 
Secretary of the American Society for Psychical 
Research, to give, under an assumed name, a series of 
sittings free to all comers, some of whom were told 
that they would see certain things which they were 
free to consider as due, or not due, to spiritual 
agencies. Others were let into the secret. Here is 
a selection from the phenomena at these sittings. 
The company heard the scratchings of pencils 
between slates screwed and corded or sealed 
together; they saw small pieces of chalk moving 
under a tumbler on the table, but they never caught 
Davey in the act of writing. They saw " spirit " 
writing on slates which they themselves had care- 
fully locked and guarded; on slates which they 
held firmly against the under surface of the table; 
on slates wrapped in thick paper and tied with 
string; answers to questions on locked slates; 
quotations from books taken by the sitters from 
the shelves on guarded slates; messages in colours 
chosen beforehand by the sitters; a message in 
German for which only a mental request had been 
made; numbers written down in response to the 
sitter's mental request, and details of private family 
history! 1 At the dark seances which Davey gave 
musical boxes floated about the room; raps were 
heard; cold hands were felt; the figures of a 

1 Fact and Fable in Psychology, p. 152. By Joseph Jastrow. 



EXPLANATORY 107 

woman and a bearded man in a turban reading a 
book, who bowed to the company, were seen, and 
finally observed to disappear through the ceiling 
with a scraping noise. " Of none of these marvels 
could the witnesses find any plausible explanation, 
so much so that more than one found himself forced 
to invoke the mysterious agency of magnetism, 
electricity, or pneumatics." 1 Little wonder that 
orthodox Spiritualism denounced Davey as a back- 
slider from " the faith as it is in Spiritualism, which 
Ellen Dawson and Alexis Didier showed forth in 
their works." An item of personal experience on 
the part of Mr. Austin Podmore, Mr. Frank Pod- 
more's brother, with Davey, which is given in 
Modern Spiritualism, may here be quoted: 

"July, 1886. 
" A few weeks ago Mr. Davey gave me a seance, 
and to the best of my recollection the following was 
the result. He gave me an ordinary school slate, 
which I held at one hand, he at the other, with our 
left hands: he then produced a double slate, hinged 
and locked. Without removing my left hand, I 
unlocked the slate, and at his direction placed three 
small pieces of chalk — red, green and grey — inside. 
I then relocked the slate, placed the key in my 
pocket, and the slate on the table in such a position 
that I could easily watch both the slate in my left 
hand and the other on the table. After some few 
minutes, during which, to the best of my belief, I 
was attentively regarding both slates, Mr. Davey 
whisked the first away and showed me on the re- 

1 Modem Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 220. 



108 THE QUESTION 

verse a message written to myself. Almost im- 
mediately afterwards he asked me to unlock the 
second slate, and on doing so I found to my intense 
astonishment another message written on both the 
insides of the slate — the lines in alternate colours 
and the chalks apparently much worn by usage. 

" My brother tells me that there was an interval 
of some two or three minutes, during which my 
attention was called away, but I can only believe it 
on his word. 

"Austin Podmore/' 

As the reader will wish to know how the trick was 
done, here is Mr. Davey's explanation, as reported 
by Frank Podmore. " The ' almost immediately ' 
in the letter covered an interval of several minutes! 
During this interval and, indeed, through the 
seance, Davey kept up a constant stream of chatter, 
more or less germane to the business in hand. Mr. 
A. Podmore, absorbed by the conjurer's patter, 
fixed his eye on Davey's face, and the latter took 
advantage of the opportunity to remove the locked 
slate under cover of a duster from under my 
brother's nose to the far end of the room, and there 
exchange it for a similar slate with a previously 
prepared message, which was then placed by means 
of the same manoeuvre with the duster in the posi- 
tion originally occupied by the first slate. Then, 
and only then, the stream of talk slackened and Mr. 
A. Podmore's attention became concentrated on the 
slate, from which the sound of spirit writing was 
now heard to proceed. To me the most surprising 
thing in the whole episode was Mr. A. Podmore's 



EXPLANATORY 109 

incredulity when told that his attention had been 
diverted from the slate for an appreciable 
time." x 

Reference should be made to the Report of the 
Seybert Commission appointed by the University of 
Pennsylvania to investigate Modern Spiritualism, 
which was issued in 1887. The Commission was 
named after Mr. Henry Seybert, who was a Spirit- 
ualist, and who, in founding a chair of philosophy in 
that university, made the appointment of the Com- 
mission a condition of the bequest. The Commis- 
sioners stated that they could not induce any private 
mediums to submit their phenomena, and the pro- 
fessional mediums sought to evade a like duty by 
asking excessive fees or exclusion of conditions that 
would prevent fraud. However, Slade and some 
half-dozen others gave them sittings. The unani- 
mous verdict of the Commission, some of whose 
members had a bias towards spiritualism — the 
chairman, Dr. Horace Howard Furness, confessed 
to a leaning in favour of its substantial truth — was 
that all the mediums were proven to be frauds. 
How they failed when no lead was given to put 
them on the scent has an example. Dr. Furness 
asked three of them in succession to whom a skull 
which he had in his library belonged in its lifetime. 
One " spirit " replied, to a black woman named 
" Dinah Melish "; the second, to " Sister Belle," and 
the third, to a Frenchwoman, " Marie St. Clair." 
What they were not detected in was supplemented 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., pp. 217, 218. A long footnote on 
p. 221 summarises the methods adopted by Davey, and the variety 
of apparatus used by professional mediums in " spirit writing." 



110 THE QUESTION 

by knowledge possessed by some of the Commission. 
The Report proceeded to outline the causes of 
credulity. These operate everywhere. " The first 
reason is to be found in the mental condition of the 
observer; if he be excited or deeply moved, his 
account cannot but be affected, and essential details 
will be distorted. For a second reason, note how 
hard it is to give a truthful account of any common 
everyday occurrence. The difficulty is increased a 
hundredfold when what we would tell partakes of 
the wonderful. Who can truthfully describe a 
juggler's trick? Who would hesitate to affirm that 
a watch which never left the eyesight for an instant 
was broken by the juggler on an anvil, or that a 
handkerchief was burned before our eyes? We all 
know that the juggler does not break the watch or 
burn the handkerchief. We watched most closely 
his right hand, while the trick was done with his 
left. The one minute circumstance that has been 
omitted would have converted the trick into no 
trick. It is likely to be the same in the account 
of the most wonderful phenomena of Spiritualism." * 
Professor Jastrow tells an amusing story of the 
outwitting of a medium. Dr. Knerr, a member of 
the Seybert Commission, attended a seance at which 
the spirit of a discarnate Indian was to appear and 
a drum to be played mysteriously. He managed to 
get some printer's ink on the drum-sticks just before 
the lights were lowered, and revelled in the bewilder- 
ment of the medium when, on turning up the lights, 
the condition of his hands was manifest. " How 
in the world printer's ink could have gotten smeared 

1 Jastrow, p. 158. 



EXPLANATORY 111 

over them while under the ' control ' of the material- 
ised Deer foot, no one, not even the medium, could 
fathom." l 

Any confidence that may be placed in Sir W. F. 
Barrett's competence to pronounce judgment on the 
spuriousness or genuineness of spiritual phenomena 
will be further shaken when we find him asserting his 
belief that " there is evidence in Mr. Stain ton Moses' 
script of supernormal knowledge. In three cases he 
had distinct prevision of a death before the news was 
generally known. One was the death of President 
Garfield, twelve hours before even a rumour of it 
had reached England. Another was that of a man 
who threw himself under a steam-roller in Baker 
Street." A spiritualist who was with Moses at the 
time told Sir William that " Moses' hand suddenly 
drew a rough sketch of some horsed vehicle and then 
wrote: 'I am killing myself to-day, Baker Street,' 
after which, passing into a trance, Moses, greatly 
agitated, said : ' Yes, yes, killed myself to-day under 
a steam-roller. 2 Yes, yes, killed myself.' No one 
present knew what this meant, but later on an 
evening paper related that a cabman had that day 
committed suicide in Baker Street by throwing him- 
self under a steam-roller." 2 In this Sir Oliver 
Lodge would see evidence that Moses " felt that he 
was in touch with helpful and informing intel- 
ligences." 3 The value of the information as 
" helpful " to knowledge of the conditions in the 
" Beyond " which the spirit of the cabman gave to 
Moses must impress every thoughtful mind. 

1 Jastrow, p. 145. 

2 Psychical Research, p. 224. s Raymond, p. 350. 



112 THE QUESTION 

Among the mass of material which Moses left 
behind him were records of communications, through 
his " controls " — severally known as Imperator, 
Rector, and Doctor x — from distinguished discarnate 
spirits, Beethoven, Swedenborg, Garfield and others 
— thirty-eight in all. The spirits gave no details 
about themselves which could not be found in any 
biographical dictionary or obituary notices. As for 
the cabman, his suicide happened early enough in 
the day to be paragraphed in The Pall Mall Gazette ~, 
but his name was not given. Does it not occur to 
Sir William Barrett that Moses, who lived in the 
neighbourhood, may have seen that paper before he 
came to the seance? Does it not occur to him to 
ask why, among the thirty-eight communicating 
intelligences, this one alone did not reveal his name 
to Moses? When will these eminent savant- spirit- 
ualists obey the Law of Parsimony, which forbids 
the postulation of unknown powers or causes when 
natural explanations suffice to account for the 
effect? 2 

As a whilom clergyman, and as a man held in 
esteem by his colleagues at the university school, 
Moses inspired implicit confidence in his integrity. 
Few and trustful were the friends whom he invited 
to his seances. On one occasion his control 
" Imperator " was indignant because a stranger 
had been admitted. His guests were already his 

1 " I absolutely agree with Mr. Podmore about Mr. Stainton Moses 
and his controlling ' spirits.' They were all humbugs." — Andrew Lang, 
Letter to The Pilot, 2nd January, 1904. 

2 " Miracle is not to be presumed until natural causes have been 
excluded." This sound aphorism is attributed to William of Occam, a 
famous schoolman of the fourteenth century. 



EXPLANATORY 113 

converts, and would have resented any expression 
of doubt as to his integrity. As has been seen, he 
started on the lower plane of conjuring: he always 
worked in complete darkness, and when he advanced, 
so to speak, from the grossly physical to become 
the passive agent of communications, which were 
in different handwritings and purported to come 
from different spirits, the hand was the hand of the 
automaton, but the voice was the voice of Moses. 
A specimen of the " new revelation " has been 
quoted: the skill of a practised pulpiteer is manifest 
throughout. 

One incident among others justifies suspicion as to 
his flawlessness. At a seance where Moses' old and 
trusty friends, the Speers, were present, he asked 
them, as soon as the spirit lights appeared, to rub 
their hands together, probably to divert their 
attention. " Suddenly," Mr. Moses wrote, " there 
arose below me, apparently under the table or near 
the floor right under my nose, a cloud of luminous 
smoke, just like phosphorus. I was fairly fright- 
ened and could not tell what was happening. My 
hands seemed to be ablaze and left their impress on 
the door and handles. It blazed for a while after I 
had touched it, but soon went out and no smell or 
trace remained." Mr. Podmore suggests that there 
had been a mishap with a bottle of phosphorised 
oil! 1 At a seance given by Mrs. Guppy, when 

1 " I cheated when I could, 
Rapped with my toe-joints, set sham hands at work, 
Wrote down names weak in sympathetic ink, 
Rubbed odic lights with ends of phosphor match, 
And all the rest." 

Mr. Sludge, " The Medium." 



114 THE QUESTION 

glowing lights issued from her finger-tips, a similar 
smell of phosphorus was noticeable; and at other 
seances the spirits would appear to have made use 
of matches; not of the "safety" kind. Their 
dependence on such adjuncts appears to believers 
to be a necessary condition of the return of the dis- 
carnates. The decadence of a mind of the order 
with which we are bound to credit the Rev. Stainton 
Moses shows that his moral sense had atrophied; 
possibly self-delusion played a large part; certainly 
private gain played none. He went from bad to 
worse. For there are mediums and mediums: the 
one class, born charlatans and rascals; the other 
class, degenerates, who, starting on a course of 
deception, end by deceiving themselves. They are 
examples of a morbid pathology with a diseased 
egotism often aggravated, as in the case of Moses, 
by indulgence in alcohol. Given a temperament 
in which the inhibitory power is weak, it is 
possible so to induce the trance state that the clair- 
voyant does transcend the normal state, and from 
the mysterious realms of subconsciousness bring 
strange messages of things heard and seen from 
what seems another world. In the case of women, 
who are more neurotic than men, the pathologic 
conditions are aggravated; hence the larger number 
of female mediums. Taken en masse, mediums are 
an unwholesome lot. 

There can be no doubt as to the class in which 
Eusapia Palladino is to be placed. Never was 
medium put to so prolonged a series of tests; never 
did the witnesses to these show more perplexity in 
making-up their minds as to her genuineness. At 



EXPLANATORY 115 

Milan four of them were satisfied as to this, the 
fifth, Professor Richet, reserved judgment. At 
the He Roubaud, where the last-named, Professor 
Oliver Lodge and the late F. W. H. Myers were 
present, the verdict was that at least some of the 
phenomena were due to supernormal agency; at a 
later seance at Carqueiranne, when Professor and 
Mrs. Sidgwick were present, they were impressed, 
but not entirely convinced. At Cambridge the 
volte-face was complete. 

Mr. Maskelyne describes her as short, plain- 
featured, sallow-complexioned and dark-eyed ; " her 
general appearance was that of the usual cunning, 
oily-countenanced spirit medium " — which tallies 
with the impression conveyed by the portraits of 
her in Mr. Hereward Carrington's Personal Ex- 
periences in Spiritualism. But the impression is 
not so repellent as that which is given of them in 
photographs of Mrs. Wriedt and Mrs. Piper, with 
their thin lips, hard expression of feature, and cal- 
culating look as if to take the measure of their 
sitters' credulity. 

At the seance given at Cambridge on the 25th 
August, 1895, by Eusapia there were present 
Mr. and Mrs. Myers, Professor Lodge, Mrs. 
Sidgwick, Mr. Maskelyne and his son. Eusapia 
wore a black dress, not of silk, because that ma- 
terial " acts as a non-conductor of the 'fluence." 
Mr. Maskelyne suggests that the real objection to 
silk is that it makes " a rustling noise at inoppor- 
tune moments." She complained that the light was 
too strong, so that was toned down, and then began 
the usual phenomena of the necromancer all the 



116 THE QUESTION 

world over: convulsions, general restlessness, rolling 
of the eyes, sighs and gurgles, with " more method 
of lifting a table than any furniture remover has 
ever dreamt of. Her fingers, wrists, toes, knees, 
calves, her abdomen, she knows how to use them 
all as occasion serves. Dozens of scientific men have 
declared that they have seen her lift a table with only 
the tips of her fingers touching it. All I can say," 
adds Mr. Maskelyne, " is that when 1 saw her lift a 
table, there was a vast deal more than her fingers in 
contact with it." Her " control " turned out to be 
a famous middle-man (or spirit) between this world 
and the beyond. A spiritualist, after witnessing 
some of her manifestations, said " Surely John 
must be my old friend John King," and from that 
time " he has been Eusapia's spirit guide." The 
details of the occurrences at the Cambridge seance 
are wearying to follow ; suffice it that Mr. Maskelyne 
wrote two days later " to Professor Lodge and 
informed him that after careful consideration he 
had come to the conclusion that Eusapia was a 
trickster," adding that tests securative against 
fraud to which he proposed she should submit 
were met with angry remonstrances and blank 
refusal. 1 

Myers reported thus to the Society for Psychical 
Research : 

" I cannot doubt that we observed much con- 
scious and deliberate fraud which must have needed 
long practice to bring it to its present level of skill. 

1 The substance of the above account of the Cambridge seance is 
taken from Mr. Maskelyne's lengthy report in The Daily Chronicle, 
29th October, 1895. 



EXPLANATORY 117 

. . . The fraud occurred both in the medium's 
waking state and during her real or alleged trance. 
I do not think there is adequate reason to suppose 
that any of the phenomena at Cambridge were 
genuine." 1 

In a letter to The Daily Chronicle of the 4th 
November, 1895, he refers to the presence of Mr. 
Maskelyne at Cambridge, testifying that " he had 
no bias and would have been as much interested 
as any of us had he found that the phenomena were 
genuine." Both Mr. Maskelyne and Dr. Hodgson, 
who had adversely criticised Professor Lodge's cred- 
ulous report, and suggested how the trick was done, 
agreed in their verdict. Confirming what Myers 
said, Mr. Maskelyne wrote to The Daily Chronicle 
as follows: — " I can conceive the possibility of some 
force existing which may enable a human being by 
expenditure of energy to produce movements of 
attraction or repulsion in objects situated at greater 
or less distance. I only require to be shown that 
such a force exists. I cannot, however, conceive 
the existence of a force which will enable a human 
being to raise perpendicularly an object situated 
at some distance, and I should require very serious 
proof of the genuineness of any manifestations 
partaking of that nature. 

" I cannot conceive the possibility of any material 
' prolongation ' being given off, and reabsorbed by 
the body of a human being. Phenomena tending to 
establish this possibility, in my opinion, demand far 
greater proof than can be derived from transient 
impressions of one's senses. I do not, however, 

1 Proc. Vol. vii., p. 133. 



118 THE QUESTION 

hold that what I cannot conceive cannot possibly 
exist." 

Myers afterwards recanted, although his " con- 
trol " communicated to a medium known as " Mrs. 
Holland," by automatic writing, a second recantation. 
Mentioning Eusapia Palladino by name, his " spirit " 
declares her to be a fraud. In a letter to The 
Daily Chronicle of 5th November, 1895, Professor 
Lodge puts on the white sheet of repentance. His 
belief in the supernormal in Eusapia's performance 
is abandoned. He says: " I returned to Cambridge 
and held two sittings, at the second of which I 
convinced myself that not a single genuine phe- 
nomenon occurred. . . . My only regret is that I 
allowed myself to make a report, although only a 
private report, to the Society for Psychical Research, 
on the strength of a few exceptionally good sittings, 
instead of waiting until I had likewise experienced 
some of the bad or tricky sittings to which all the 
Continental observers had borne frequent witness." 
It is to be regretted that little profit has come to 
Sir Oliver Lodge after so severe a lesson, and that 
it has not imbued him with a spirit of caution in 
acceptance of what, on the more serious side of 
spiritualism, may also prove " bad and tricky." 

In a letter of the 12th November, 1895, Sir Alfred 
Lyall wrote to me: "It is amusing to see that the 
foremost supporters, except Myers, are all beating 
retreats under cover of various explanations of their 
attitude. In to-day's Daily Chronicle, for example, 
Andrew Lang withdraws behind a demonstration 
of humorous incredulity." In the letter referred 
to, Lang writes of " this humorist [Eusapia] . . . 



EXPLANATORY 119 

I frankly admit that on the strength of Mr. Lodge's 
report, I did expect the S.P.R. a better run for their 
money." 

The Report of the Paris Committee, based mainly 
on Eusapia's rejections of the tests which they 
desired to apply, was adverse. It was the old 
story. The degree of light at the seances was 
determined by her, cover being thereby given to 
her twitchings and convulsive movements. It was 
noticed that when all the company stood up there 
was no tilting of the table: that usually happened 
when Eusapia's dress bulged out and hid any action 
of her foot, restrictions on the free movement of 
which she generally resented. Nearly everything 
that happened was within reach of her hands or feet. 
She objected to the sitters touching the table with 
their feet, or knees, or any part of their clothes. 
" It impedes," Mr. Hereward Carrington naively 
explains, " the movements of the table, and Eusapia 
says the sitters would thereby convert themselves 
into ' conductors,' and would discharge the collec- 
tion of fluid in the table by conveying it to the 
floor." 1 The balance test, which was applied to 
Home, was applied to her: she was detected in 
depressing the spring by means of a hair. At one 
seance, when the " spirit " light failed, there was a 
strong smell of phosphorus (see ante, p. 113). 

The most detailed report of her performances is 
that which was the outcome of sittings at Naples 
held at the instance of the Society for Psychical 
Research by a Committee of three reputed experts 
at detecting conjuring. It fills two long chapters 

1 Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 242. 



120 THE QUESTION 

in the first part of Mr. Frank Podmore's Newer 
Spiritualism, published in 1910, the year of his 
lamented death. At these, the " higher phenomena " 
— spirit lights, visible heads and hands, and appear- 
ings from behind curtains, were in full play. One of 
the three members of the committee, Mr. Hereward 
Carrington, explains that Eusapia is extremely sen- 
sitive to light during the trance state, and even the 
faintest illumination seems to hurt her intensely. 1 
So, apparently, it hurts all other mediums. 

When it was suggested that she might be blind- 
folded, she said that that would " prevent mental 
concentration. As this is essential, I have to keep 
my eyes open during the greater part of every 
sitting." No darkness, no seance, is the absolute 
condition under which the whole gang works, and 
yet they audaciously reproach the unbelievers as 
" O ye of little faith." 

" The record," says Mr. Podmore, " is as nearly 
as possible perfect." The three witnesses depone 
to the conviction that what they saw did really 
happen, but, as he adds, " the record at critical 
moments is incomplete, and at almost every point 
leaves obvious loopholes for trickery." 2 

Mr. Hereward Carrington's mixture of candour 
and credulity in his account of the happenings at 
the seances in New York does not inspire confidence 
in his competence. He admits that " much fraud 
was discovered during the latter part of her trip," 
but he is " just as fully convinced as ever of the 
supernormal character of the facts." 3 He is frank- 

1 Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 240. 

3 The Newer Spiritualism, p. 141. 

8 Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, pp. 127, 129. 



EXPLANATORY 121 

ness itself. " Inasmuch as I had in the past had no 
difficulty in detecting fraud in practically every 
physical medium I had investigated at the first 
sitting, I feel that I could not possibly have been 
deceived time after time by the few comparatively 
simple phenomena which Eusapia produces." x On 
the voyage to America she gave a seance at which a 
" Dr. Oteri, pale and unmistakably moved [i.e. his 
emotions wrought to fever pitch of expectancy], 
asked for the spirit of his daughter. At once, 
according to his statement, he was seized with an 
affectionate embrace. To his query as to whether 
she was satisfied with her life in spirit-land, there 
came three knocks on the side of the table." The 
usual cold draught was felt. Why the spirit was so 
voiceless that the table had to answer for her is not 
made clear. There followed, at least all present 
testified thereto, a hideous, black, mask-like thing 
near the top of the curtain. Result — hysterics. 
" All rose from the table but Madame Palladino, 
who sat motionless, emitting little moans. Her face 
was somewhat haggard." 2 

Further materialisations followed on her landing. 
These were not novelties in America. At a seance 
given by a medium named Nicols, one of the spirits 
caught its drapery on a lady's hat and had to wait 
its return to the spirit-land while the drapery was 
unhooked. At another seance, where a Mr. De Witt 
Haugh was performing, at which Mr. Carrington 
was present, the hymn " Nearer my God to Thee " 
was sung, and when the room was plunged into total 
darkness (not to the hymn " Lead, Kindly Light ") 

* Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 130. 2 Ibid., p. 135. 



122 THE QUESTION 

the first spirit, who had demanded that the company- 
should stand when she appeared — a short, white, 
rather dumpy figure — was announced as Queen 
Victoria. " How are you, Queen? " a man 
stammered out; but no reply was vouchsafed. It 
would have added to the interest if her Majesty 
had revealed whether she had seen King David, 
whom it was always understood she had said she 
would refuse to meet. A glimmer of light disclosed 
the medium, stocking-footed, gathering-up some 
white muslin. At what Mr. Carrington calls " the 
most famous " — perhaps he meant to write " in- 
famous " — " seance of the series," one of the sitters, 
prompted by the late Professor Hugo Miinsterberg 
of Harvard University, a distinguished psychologist, 
stole into the cabinet behind Eusapia, and suddenly 
caught tight hold of an unshod foot, causing her to 
cry out. At the time, the Professor had, as he 
thought, his foot on the one which was seized, 
whereas it was resting on her empty shoe. 1 At 
Cambridge Dr. Hodgson showed that Eusapia made 
one foot do duty for two by getting the sitters on 
each side of her to place their feet so that with the 
toe and heel of one foot she could make them believe 
that they each held a distinct foot. She was asked 

1 There will have been joy in the spirit world over his repentance 
on his arrival there. 

Miss Caroline Pillsbury, of Brookline, Mass., editor of Boston Ideas, 
claims to have received a " spirit " message from him in which he 
says : " Although I have been in the spirit world but a brief time, I 
have received absolute proof that excarnate beings can and do com- 
municate with their earth friends. However valuable the messages I 
may bring in future time, this one to-day is important. Spirit return 
is a truth. I am Hugo Miinsterberg." — Central News. 

Pall Mall Gazette, 18th January, 1917, 



EXPLANATORY 123 

if she would allow her hands to be held in position 
with a piece of string instead of being grasped by 
the sitters. She refused this absolutely, and also 
other conditions whose object was to prevent possible 
fraud. 

After attending a seance, Darwin suggested that 
" the medium managed to get the two men on each 
side of him to hold each other's hands, so that he 
was thus free to perform his antics." 1 

At a sitting given at Moncure Conway's house, 
when Professor Clifford was present, Williams was 
the medium. There was the usual hooking of finger 
in finger by the company, then the medium's dodge 
to change the fingers, thus freeing one hand. The 
delusion on the part of the holders of either hand 
or of their pressure on either foot is complete. 
Huxley gives an example of the easy deception of 
the senses. When a marble is held between the 
finger and thumb and looked at with both eyes, 
sight and touch agree that it is single. Squint at 
it, and it appears double to the vision, although re- 
maining single to the touch. Cross the fore and 
middle finger and put the marble between their tips, 
and it will feel as double to the touch, while it is 
single to the sight. 

Obtruded heads and hands and quasi-human 
shapes were manifest features of Eusapia's seances. 
At one of these she appears to have invoked the spirit 
of the historic pirate John King, " beloved," to quote 
Mr. Podmore, " with his scarcely less famous daugh- 
ter Katie [revealed to Sir William Crookes and Mrs. 
Guppy], of two generations of spiritualists through- 

1 Life and Letters. Vol. iii., p. 188, 



124 THE QUESTION 

out the breadth of two continents." John King 
puzzles Mr. Carrington as both ubiquitous and 
elusive: he suggests that King is an emanation from 
Eusapia's body rather than a distinct intelligence. 1 

A month later arrangements were made for six 
sittings by Eusapia, in the Physical Laboratory of 
Columbia University, at which a galaxy of men of 
science was present. There were three physicists, 
two biologists, one psychologist, and two neur- 
ologists. But the amount of fraud detected at 
the earlier seances reduced the number to four. 
Professor Wilson, a biologist, said that they left 
on his mind " the strongest possible impression of 
fraud." 2 

Honest recorder as he is, Mr. Carrington says that 
" the whole crux of the matter is that poor seances 
prove nothing; good ones prove the apparently 
supernormal character of the facts, and until one 
has seen both good and bad seances, one is not 
entitled to express an opinion upon the whole case." 3 
But he will probably find himself more in agreement 
with non-spiritualists in his suggestion that " what 
appears spiritistic or external to the medium may, 
after all, be purely subjective in character," 4 and 
he will do well to include in his suggested " Partial 

1 Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 255. 

3 " When Madame Palladino visited us, I had the pleasure of hold- 
ing her right hand and foot during the two seances in which she was 
so thoroughly exposed in Collier's. [Article in Collier's Weekly, New 
York, 14th May, 1910.] I believe the date was April, 1910. I gave her 
$6.00 for the table she had had made for the purpose, and have since 
taught a little girl of twelve to do all the tipping in the exact manner 
that it was done by Palladino." — Extract from a private letter from 
an American conjurer. 

8 Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 221. 

* Ibid., p. 226. 



EXPLANATORY 125 

List of Phenomena which could be studied in a 
Psychical Laboratory " — in the absence of a medium, 
" study of the psychology of deception and experi- 
ments in the induction of illusions and hallucina- 
tions." That list, it may be added, includes 
" thought-photography ; experiments with the so- 
called human fluid, in magnetic healing, in study 
of the ' cold breeze ' felt at seances, in dowsing, 
and in weighing and photographing the soul at the 
moment of death." 1 " A mad world, my masters." 
In Scandinavian mythology the Trolls burst at 
sunrise; the flitting spirit vanishes in the light and 
reappears in the darkness. The spiritualists ex- 
plain that the mediums hold their seances in the 
dark because the delicately materialised forms of 
the spirits would be destroyed by the action of light 
rays, strong sunlight being extremely destructive 
to both animal and vegetable protoplasm. 2 The 
savage, who knows nothing about protoplasm, 
believes that the spirits swarm in the dark, alert 
to work evil; hence the widespread custom of 
carrying torches or lighting fires at nightfall. The 
same reason explains the ceremony of blessing 
candles in the Roman Catholic Church: 

4 *. . .a wondrous force and might 
Doth in these Candels lie, which if at any time they light, 
They sure believe that neyther storme nor tempest dare abide, 
Nor fearful sprites that walke by night, nor hurts of frost or haile." 8 

The savage dreads the possible return of the dead; 
hence the various customs in vogue to prevent it. 
The corpse is carried out feet foremost, so that it 

1 Personal Experiences in Spiritualism, p. 269. 

2 Ibid., p. 236. 

8 Brand's Popular Antiquities. Vol. L, p. 26. (Hazlitt's Edition.) 



126 THE QUESTION 

cannot find its way back, stones are piled on the 
grave to prevent the ghost rising, ashes or sticks are 
strewn along the funeral route to hinder it in any 
attempt to return, and so forth. Here, in desire to 
commune with the departed and to see the beloved 
one in recognisable form, the spiritualist and the 
savage part company. Trading on the impassioned 
yearnings to behold the very image of the lost ones, 
the rascality and buffoonery of the medium come 
into full play, deceiving " the very elect." 

The materialisation business was in full swing 
between 1872 and 1880, since when there has been 
a not unaccountable slump in it. 

The evidence given by Sir William Crookes in 
support of the genuineness of the phenomenon has 
been cited. Summarising it, he averred that he 
saw Katie King's spirit at a seance given by Miss 
Florence Cook (Mrs. Corner) at his house in May, 
1874. She was seated in front of the medium, 
muffled in a shawl, her face not visible, only her 
hands and feet. This is not a very definite present- 
ment. In the preceding December, at a seance given 
by the same medium, Katie appeared white-robed, 
when a skeptical guest, Mr. Volckman, after careful 
scrutiny of the form, features and other character- 
istics of the spirit, was convinced that she and the 
medium were one. He rushed forward and seized 
Katie by the hand and waist, which were those of 
Florence Cook. Two of her friends rescued her 
from his grasp. Katie retreated to the cabinet, 
which, after a delay of five minutes, was opened, 
revealing Miss Cook, dressed in black, and seated. 



EXPLANATORY 127 

This woman was detected in January, 1880, in per- 
sonating a spirit. So much, then, for the genuine- 
ness of her performances, to which Sir William 
Crookes testified five months after Mr. Volckman's 
detection of her trickery. 

Some years ago four Motuan girls persuaded 
many natives of Port Moresby that they could evoke 
the spirit of a youth named Tamosi, who had died 
three years before. The mother and other sorrow- 
ing relatives of the deceased paid a high price to the 
principal medium, a young woman named Mea, for 
an interview with the ghost. The meeting took 
place in a house by night. The relatives and friends 
squatted on the ground in expectation, and sure 
enough the ghost presented himself in the darkness 
and went round shaking hands most affably with 
the company. However, a sceptic who happened 
to assist at this spiritual sitting had the temerity 
to hold on tight to the proffered hand of the ghost, 
while another infidel assisted him to obtain a sight 
as well as a touch of the vanished hand by striking a 
light. It then turned out that the supposed appari- 
tion was no spirit, but the medium Mea herself. 
She was brought before a magistrate, who sentenced 
her to a short term of imprisonment and relieved 
her of the property which she had amassed by the 
exercise of her spiritual talents. 1 "It is hardly for 
us," adds Sir J. G. Frazer, " or at least for some of 

1 C. G. Seligman, The Melanesians of British New Guinea, pp. 
190-192, cited in Sir J. G. Frazer's The Belief in Immortality, vol. i., 
p. 196. At a seance given by a Miss Wood, of Newcastle, when two 
materialised spirit forms walked about the room, one of them — the 
child form of an Indian girl named Pocha — touched and even kissed 
some of the sitters. Studies in Psychical Research, p. 24. By F. 
Podmore. 



128 THE QUESTION 

us, to cast stones at the efforts of ignorant savages 
to communicate by means of such intermediaries 
with their departed friends. Similar attempts have 
been made in our own country within our lifetime, 
and I believe that they are still being made in 
perfect good faith by educated ladies and gentle- 
men who, like their black brethren and sisters in the 
faith, are sometimes made the dupes of designing 
knaves. If New Guinea has its Meas, Europe has 
its Eusapias. Human credulity and vulgar impos- 
ture are the same all the world over." 

The year 1878 supplies two cases of mediums as 
rogues and vagabonds. Two of them, the before- 
named Williams and Rita, gave a seance at Amster- 
dam, when a spirit known as " Charlie " was mater- 
ialised. One of the company clutched at it and found 
that he had hold of Rita by the coat collar. On the 
rascals being searched there were found on Rita a 
beard, six handkerchiefs, a bottle of phosphorised 
oil; and on Williams a dirty black beard, some 
yards of muslin and another bottle of oil. It was 
suggested by the editor of The Spiritualist that 
" evil spirits sometimes abetted the mediums in 
imposture, and that the facts pointed to Williams 
and Rita being under some strong control on the 
disastrous occasion." x Similarly, when Mrs. Corner 
was detected, the editor argued that " grasping one 
of the forms and finding it to be the medium proves 
nothing." Sympathetically, the Rev. Stainton 
Moses said that " such methods of inquiry would 
often land a man in a fallacy, and that there were 
powers and phenomena which were not amenable 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 111. 



EXPLANATORY 129 

to such rude and ready methods of investigation." *■ 
" The last," says Moncure Conway, " that I heard 
of Williams was at Rotterdam, where the Customs 
officer seized his paraphernalia of wigs, masks, rag 
hands, and phosphorus." 2 

Commenting on the detection of the " flower 
medium," Frau Anna Rothe, who was sentenced 
to eight months' imprisonment in Berlin in March, 
1903, Mr. Wake Cook says: The fact that Frau 
Rothe brought a quantity of " flowers and other 
things is all in her favour, as the flowers were real 
ones, and if she had not brought them the spirits 
would have had to steal them, the contention being 
that the flowers were dematerialised by a chemistry 
more subtle than that of Crookes or Dewar, and 
were rematerialised in the seance room. The fact 
that our chemists have recently succeeded in de- 
materialising matter shows that they are on the 
track of these secrets." 3 Credo quia absurdum est 
should be adopted as a spiritualist motto. 

One more of these repellent examples will suffice. 
A clerical spiritualist, named Colley, was present at 
a seance given by the medium, Dr. Monck, whom he 
describes as " under control of ' Samuel.' " He was 
seen by all to be " the living gate for the extrusion 
of spirit forms from the realm of mind into this 
world of matter." This is what Colley tells us, in 
the best pulpit style, that he saw "most plainly": 

" Several times a perfect face and form of ex- 
quisite womanhood partially issue from Dr. Monck 

1 Spiritual Notes, February, 1880. 
3 Autobiography. Vol. ii., p. 352. 

3 Spiritualism : Is Communication with the Spirit World an Estab- 
lished Fact? (Isbister.) 



130 THE QUESTION 

about the region of the heart. Then after several 
attempts a full-formed figure, in a nebulous con- 
dition at first, but growing solider as it issued from 
the medium, left Dr. Monck, and stood a separate 
individuality, two or three feet off, bound to him by 
a slender attachment as if of gossamer, which, at my 
request, ' Samuel,' the control, severed with the 
medium's left hand, and there stood embodied a 
spirit form of unutterable loveliness, robed in attire 
spirit spun — a meshy webwork from no mortal 
loom, of a fleeciness unattainable and of trans- 
figurative whiteness truly glistening." x This was 
on the 25th September, 1877, some months after 
Monck had " done time " (see ante, p. 44). 

Among his apparatus were masks, stuffed gloves, 
muslin and a jointed rod. At the trial of Colley v. 
Maskelyne, the late Dr. A. R. Wallace, subpoenaed 
as a witness in support of the plaintiff, deponed that 
in 1878 he had seen " Dr. Monck in the trance state, 
when there appeared a faint white patch on the 
left side of his coat, which increased in density and 
spread till it reached his shoulder; then there was a 
space gradually widening to six feet between it and 
his body; it became very distinct and had the out- 
line of a woman in flowing white drapery. ... I 
was absolutely certain that it could not be produced 
by any possible trick." 2 

Those to whom, despite these exposures of vulgar 
frauds, the validity of the phenomenon of extrud- 

1 Spiritualist, 5th October, 1877. Other spirits, if Raymond Lodge, 
speaking through Feda, is to be trusted, have their robes " made of 
light built by the thoughts on the earth plane." — Raymond, p. 199. 

2 Daily Chroniele, 27th April, 1907. 



EXPLANATORY 131 

ing women may still be an open question, will not 
receive illumination from Sir Oliver Lodge's de- 
liverances, against which there lies no charge of 
lightness of touch: "A materialising power may 
continue, analogous to that which enabled us, when 
here on the planet, to assimilate all sorts of material, 
to digest it and arrange it into the organism that 
served us as a body. It is extraordinarily difficult 
to conceive of such a power [agreed], and impossible 
to suppose that it can be a direct power of a 
psychical agency unaided by the reproductive ac- 
tivity of any other unit already incarnate." x 

Speaking of the " direct voice," " direct writing " 
and " materialisation " in Raymond, he says : " In 
these strange and, from one point of view, more 
advanced occurrences, though lower in another 
sense, inert matter appears to be operated on 
without the direct intervention of physiological 
mechanism." 2 

Sir Oliver Lodge's non-committal on the question 
of the genuineness of spirit photographs has been 
quoted: Dr. Wallace's rejoicings that such a 
marvellous triumph of the spirit over the flesh is no 
longer an American monopoly, can only provoke a 
smile, and the opinion of Mr. Edward Carpenter on 
those " marvels " has no value whatever. Hence, 
but for the qualified belief in their occurrence which 
Sir Oliver Lodge expresses and to which those 
who follow his lead may attach importance, the 
" marvel " might be named only to be dismissed. 
However, brief treatment will suffice. 

1 Survival of Man, p. 138. 2 P. 365. 



132 THE QUESTION 

More than half-a-century ago excitement was 
created in " circles " in Boston, America, by the 
exhibition of a photograph of a Doctor Gardner, a 
spiritualist, on which was the portrait of a cousin 
who had been dead twelve years. It was taken by 
a Mr. Mumler, to whose studio numbers flocked to 
obtain photographs of departed relatives. But 
examination of these proved that in taking some of 
them another person had to sit for the spirit. 
Mumler transferred his camera to New York, and 
was there prosecuted for fraud, but got off owing 
to a technical defect in the indictment. The 
trick still goes on merrily in America, the euphoni- 
ously-named Bangs Sisters of Chicago being fore- 
most artists in the line. Forty years passed before 
the " marvels " were repeated here. Mr. and Mrs. 
Guppy, with the help of a photographer, who 
followed Mumler 's methods, produced spirit pictures. 
The sitter was posed before the camera and on the 
developed photograph would be seen another figure, 
often splotchy and blurred. The negative had been 
twice exposed, and the dodge exposed with it. Par- 
tial exposure of a sensitive plate for a moment to 
a draped figure will secure the appearance of a 
ghostly, transparent shadow on the negative. 

The Rev. Stainton Moses testified to his having 
been photographed by M. Buguet at Paris when he 
was lying in a trance state in London. Probably 
the memory of that reverend witness played him 
false, as M. Buguet, in the summer season of 1874, 
had plied his art in London. June, 1875, Buguet 
was charged by the French Government with the 
fraudulent manufacture of spirit photographs, when 



EXPLANATORY 133 

he made a full confession of his methods. Despite 
this, a crowd of witnesses came forward to testify 
that they were convinced that he had obtained 
photographs of spirits dear to them. Recognition, 
they all said, was unmistakable. Notwithstanding 
this, Buguet was sentenced to a year's imprisonment, 
and a fine of five hundred francs was imposed on 
him. Four hundred years ago Cardinal Caraffa, 
legate of Pope Paul IV., said of the Parisians: 
" Populus vult decipi decipiatur" The scoff has 
not lost its force to-day. 

How, unwittingly, a ghost photograph may be 
caused is illustrated by a story told by Mr. Podmore : 

" The operator had been photographing a chapel. 
On developing the plate he observed in a panel of 
the woodwork a faintly discernible face, in which 
he recognised the features of a young acquaintance 
who had recently met with a tragic death. In fact, 
when he told me the story and showed me the 
picture, I could easily see the faint but well-marked 
features of a handsome, melancholy lad of eighteen. 
A colleague, however, to whom I showed the photo- 
graph without relating the story, at once identified 
the face as that of a woman of thirty! The out- 
lines are in reality so indistinct as to leave ample 
room for the imagination to work in; and there is 
no reason to doubt that the camera had merely pre- 
served faint traces of some intruder who, during its 
prolonged exposure, stood for a few seconds in front 
of it." x 

In 1909 the proprietors of The Daily Mail 
appointed a committee to investigate the whole 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 125. 



134 THE QUESTION 

business. An abstract of the proceedings, together 
with an explanation of the method of " faking," 
appeared in The Times, 22d June of that year, from 
which the following is quoted: — 

" Three spiritualists and three expert photog- 
raphers formed the Committee. The three spirit- 
ualists reported that the photographers were not 
in a proper frame of mind to succeed in obtaining 
spirit photographs. [The spirits, if not " tough," 
are " devilish sly."' The photographers announced 
that no scrap of testimony was put before them to 
show that spirit photography was possible. They 
invited the submission to them of spirit photo- 
graphs, and, having examined these critically, they 
reported that not only did they not testify to their 
supernatural production, but that they bore on the 
face of them circumstantial evidence of the way in 
which they had been produced." 

Mr. Maskelyne describes the two methods of pro- 
duction. In the first method — double printing — 
" the scene is printed from one negative and the 
spirit printed from another." In the second method 
— double exposure — " the group is arranged with 
the ' spirit ' in its proper place, the lens is uncovered, 
and half the necessary exposure is given. The lens 
is again capped, every one remaining still except 
the ' spirit,' who moves out of sight, and then the 
exposure is completed. The result of this is, that 
whilst all else is sharp and well defined, the ' spirit ' 
is represented by a hazy outline, through which all 
that is behind it shows." x 

1 The Supernatural?, p. 203. 



EXPLANATORY 135 



A SELECTED LIST OF MEDIUMS 
DETECTED IN FRAUD 

American 
The Fox Sisters, Bly, Colchester, Foster, Daven- 
port Brothers, Mrs. Fay, "Dr." Slade, Florence 
Cook (Mrs. Corner), Eglinton, Mumler. 

English 
Mary Showers, Hudson, Heme, Williams, Rita, 
"Dr." Monck, Petty, Farman. 

French 
Buguet, Debord, 1 Madame Amouroux. 

German 
Frau Rothe. 

Italian 
Eusapia Palladino. 

Suspected, but not actually Detected 
Home, A. J. Davis, Stainton Moses. 

1 He told his dupes that the spirits had formed a Committee of 
patronage, of which they had nominated King David as patron, and of 
which Lamartine, Tolstoy, Musset and Gambetta were members! The 
list of officials of the London Spiritualist Alliance Limited is headed 
thus : " W. Stainton Moses and E. Dawson Rogers, Presidents in 
Spirit Life." 



PART III 

PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA OF 
SPIRITUALISM 



Ill 

CLAIRVOYANCE 

EMANUEL SVEDBERG, better known as 
Swedenborg, is the unwitting founder of 
the later school of Modern Spiritualism — 
i.e. the branch of it which is concerned with the 
validity of psychical phenomena. In his Human 
Personality Mr. Myers says : " For my own part I 
regard Swedenborg — not, assuredly, as an inspired 
teacher, nor even as a trustworthy interpreter of his 
own experiences, but yet as a true and early pre- 
cursor of that great inquiry which it is our present 
object to advance." x He left no immediate suc- 
cessors, but his revelations are anticipatory of the 
articles in the creed of the apostles of Spiritualism. 
" I have conversed," he says, " with all my relatives 
and friends, likewise with kings and princes and men 
of learning, after their departure out of this life, 
and this now for twenty-seven years without inter- 
ruption." " His intercourse," an authority on the 
subject reports, " extended to souls from the moon 
and the planets." 2 And foreseeing that many who 
read his Memorable Relations will believe them to 
be fictions of imagination, he protests in truth that 
they are not fictions, but were really seen and heard; 

1 Vol. i., p. 6. " The visions of Swedenborg, divested of their 
exuberant trappings, are not wholly unreal, and are by no means 
wholly untrue." Sir Oliver Lodge: Survival of Man, p. 236. 

2 James Spiers. Art., " Swedenborg," Chambers's Encyclopedia. 

139 



140 THE QUESTION 

not seen and heard in any state of mind in sleep, 
but in a state of complete wakefulness. 1 His visions 
date from April, 1745, when he claimed to have 
received and to be in possession " of spiritual 
sight, spiritual illumination and spiritual powers of 
reason." 2 He was then fifty-seven. 

" I was in London," he tells one M. Robsahm, 
" and dined late at my usual quarters, where I had 
engaged a room in which at pleasure to prosecute 
my studies in natural philosophy. I was hungry 
and ate with great appetite. Towards the end of 
the meal I remarked that a kind of mist spread 
before my eyes and I saw the floor of my room 
covered with hideous reptiles, such as serpents, toads, 
and the like. 3 I was astonished, having all my wits 
about me and being perfectly conscious. The dark- 
ness attained its height and then passed away. I 
now saw a man sitting in a corner of the chamber. 
As I had thought myself entirely alone, I was 
greatly frightened, when he said to me, ' Eat not so 
much ! ' My sight again became dim, but when I 
recovered it I found myself alone in the room. The 
unexpected alarm hastened my return home. I 
thought it over attentively and I was not able to 
attribute it to chance or any physical cause. I 
went home, but the next night the same man 
appeared to me again. I was this time not at all 
alarmed. The man said, * I am God, the Creator 
and Redeemer of the World. I have chosen thee 

1 The True Christian Religion, London, 1855. Nos. 156, etc. 
Quoted in Tylor's Primitive Culture. Vol. i., p. 144. 

2 Emanuel Swedenborg, p. 74. By J. J. Garth Wilkinson. (1886.) 
* It may sound ungenerous, but it is apposite to remark that spectres 

of reptiles often follow excessive use of alcohol. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 141 

to unfold to men the spiritual sense of Holy Scrip- 
ture. I will myself dictate to thee what thou shalt 
write.' The same night the world of spirits, hell 
and heaven, were convincingly open to me, where I 
found many persons of my acquaintance of all con- 
ditions. From that day forth I gave up all worldly 
learning and laboured only in spiritual things, 
according to what the Lord commanded me to 
write." * 

The story of the thirty years of life that were his 
after the divine apparition is compact of ever-fresh 
wonders. He was more than as " one caught up to 
the third heaven " ; traversing space, he was, so 
he believed, carried from planet to planet, whose 
inhabitants he describes. Of the Martians, to whose 
existence our telescopes bring no evidence, he said 
that they were vegetarians and clothed in the fibrous 
bark of trees, and in Jupiter he saw herds of wild 
horses. Of Uranus and Neptune he had not heard; 
they had not been charted. 

In a childhood whose thoughts from its fourth to 
its tenth year were constantly engrossed by reflect- 
ing on God, on salvation, and on the spiritual affec- 
tions of men, often revealing things in his talk which 
filled his parents (his father was Bishop of Skara, 
in Sweden) with astonishment, and made them 
declare at times that " certainly angels spoke 
through his mouth," 2 we see the germs of Swed- 
enborg's mystical attitude in adult life toward 
spiritual things. 

His followers, who adopted his name, believed 
that he was the precursor of a new dispensation. 

1 Garth Wilkinson, pp. 76, 77. 2 Garth Wilkinson, p. 6. 



142 THE QUESTION 

" The New Church signified by the New Jerusalem 
in the Revelation " was started in 1788, sixteen 
years after his death. If the Swedenborgians can 
hardly be called a flourishing body — Boston, U.S.A., 
has the largest congregation — they have numbered 
men of considerable power; among these, one of 
our own time, an American, Henry James, father 
of the novelist and of his brother William, prag- 
matist and psychologist. 

Although the fundamental tenets of the newer 
spiritualism draw their inspiration from Sweden- 
borg's trance utterances, the impulse to that move- 
ment is traceable to the theories of a Viennese 
doctor, Friedrich Anton Mesmer. He was born in 
1733, and therefore was in his thirty-ninth year 
when Swedenborg died. There is no record that 
the two ever met. Believing, as an astrologer, that 
the stars, in given positions and at given times, 
determine human fate, Mesmer identified this stellar 
magnetism, as he held it to be, with " un fluide uni- 
versellement " in the human body, which could 
affect all other bodies as " animal magnetism.'* He 
may have derived his theory from a study of the 
voluminous writings of Von Hohenheim, better 
known as Paracelsus, who, two centuries before 
Mesmer, gained fame by preaching and practising 
a doctrine of astro-magnetism blended with cabal- 
istic rubbish ; or from " Master Greatrakes, the Irish 
Stroaker," who professed to cure disease by " a 
sanative contagion" 1 ; or from Robert Fludd, who 
explained magnetism as due to the irradiation of 
angels. Other possible sources might be named, 

1 Kirk's Secret Commonwealth, p. 30. (1893 reprint.) 



CLAIRVOYANCE 143 

but these would only add to the list of " faith- 
healers " who preceded Mesmer. He asserted that 
cures, especially of nervous diseases, could be ef- 
fected, even at a distance, through " un fluide uni- 
versellement." He anticipated Mrs. Mary Eddy's 
" absent treatment." In 1778 he went to Paris. 
This was two years before the arrival there of 
" Count " Cagliostro of Diamond Necklace noto- 
riety, the arch-quack, to sell his " elixir of immortal 
life," by which he assured his dupes that he had 
himself reached his one hundred and fiftieth year, 
his young and charming wife adding that they had 
a son who was a captain in the Dutch navy! It 
should be noted that, when he came to England, 
the Swedenborgians are said to have given him 
hearty welcome. His freemasonry caused him to 
be driven from one country to another, and finally 
led to his condemnation to death by the Holy 
Inquisition. But this was commuted to imprison- 
ment for life in the fortress of San Leon, where 
he died at the age of fifty-two. 

Shrewdly playing on the imagination of his 
patients, Mesmer invested his consulting-room with 
an atmosphere of the mysterious and the aesthetic. 
Dim lights were reflected from mirrors on the walls, 
scents diffused their fragrance, and soft music 
carried the patients to the borders of dreamland. 
They were seated together, sometimes with their 
hands clasped, round a circular trough in which 
was a row of bottles containing " mesmeric " fluid. 
Wires with handles, which the patients grasped, 
were fastened to the mouths of the bottles to ensure 
contact. After a short period of silence to deepen 



1U THE QUESTION 

the impressiveness, Mesmer would appear in a coat 
of lilac silk, and with a magic wand in hand, which 
he at once gracefully discarded, thus freeing his 
hands to pass strokes over the bodies of the patients 
and, as they believed, saturate them with the heal- 
ing " fluid." Then he made them stare fixedly at 
some object till the optic nerves were wearied and 
a hypnotic state was induced. His career need not 
here be pursued further than to add that the popular 
excitement which he raised, and his appeals to the 
French Academy of Science and the Royal Medical 
Society to confirm the truth of his discovery, led to 
the appointment of a Royal Commission in 1784, of 
which Benjamin Franklin was a member, to investi- 
gate the subject. The result was a condemnatory 
report. The three factors to which the Commission 
attributed any benefit that Mesmer's patients had 
received were " (1) actual contact; (2) the excite- 
ment of the imagination, and (3) the mechanical 
imitation which impels us to repeat what strikes 
our senses." Mesmer stuck to his theory, but the 
report damned his future and he passed into 
obscurity. He died in 1815. 

Nevertheless interest in " animal magnetism " 
was unabated. Theories of subtle and occult cura- 
tive forces were in the air; their vagueness, as is 
ever the case, only added to their attractiveness, 
and magnetism did the duty which, perchance, is 
more satisfactorily discharged nowadays by the 
blessed word " electricity." There was a propor- 
tion of genuine metal mixed with a heap of alloy, 
and the public took the coin, not at its intrinsic, but 
at its face, value. This is more than metaphor, 



CLAIRVOYANCE 145 

since virtues were attributed to the more precious 
metals as media of mesmeric effluence. The theory 
of magnetic and pathologic connection between 
the human body and the stars continued to find 
adherents among Tellurists and Siderists, as they 
were labelled. There was justification for belief in 
some mysterious force in the soothing effects wrought 
upon nervous patients when lulled into the hypnotic 
state. The matter remained at the empirical stage, 
the loadstone still led, and in 1845 Baron von 
Reichenbach, enthused by researches into animal 
magnetism, discovered, so he honestly believed, a 
new intermediate force in nature; a subtle emana- 
tion given off by the nervous system and differing 
in each person; a vapour also emanating from dis- 
carnate spirits, whereby communication with them 
was established. This force he named " Od." 1 

1 In the jargon of Esoteric Buddhism, Mr. Sinnett talks of " the spirit 
of the sensitive getting odylised by the aura of the spirit of the 
Devachan." Devachan is " a state of consciousness apart from the 
physical body." See Mrs. Besant's article " Theosophy " in Chambers's 
Encyclopaedia. 

In a book entitled Future Life in the Light of Ancient Wisdom and 
Modern Science, published in 1907, the author, Mr. Louis Elbe, says 
the possibility of " the radiation of the odic fluid can no longer be 
denied in principle now that we know of the general radio-activity of 
matter" (p. 291). "This fiuidic radiation reveals the action of the 
etheric body ... it takes place normally outside the cutaneous 
envelope of the body and is concentrated chiefly at the sensory organs 
and extremities. . . . Unfortunately, it is imperceptible to the ma- 
jority of men. Under ordinary conditions it can be seen only by a 
few persons gifted with a special visual sensibility permitting them to 
discern the glow by which it is accompanied." [The Spiritualist says, 
with the Apostle Paul: "We walk by faith, not by sight"]. As a result, 
its existence is still a contested matter (p. 295). All psychics are 
agreed that in the hypnotic state they acquire the vision of this fluid 
which they can see radiating about their magnetism (p. 297). It must 
be acknowledged that the phenomena occur almost invariably in dark- 
ness. This fact may doubtless be explained by supposing that light 
dissolves the odic fluid and deprives it of all consistence (p. 325). 



146 THE QUESTION 

Into this chaos of theories of odylo-cerebral sym- 
pathies, phreno-magnetism, aura, neuro-vital fluids, 
and other imponderables, order was at last imported 
by a surgeon, James Braid, of Scotch birth and 
practising in Manchester. At sittings given by a 
travelling mesmerist, a Mr. Lafontaine, in 1841, 
Braid noticed that the mesmerised subjects could 
not open their eyes, and explained this to himself 
as being due to paralysis of the nerve-centres 
through the strain imposed upon them. He made 
experiments on his servants and friends, and found 
that he could induce sleep in them by making them 
stare fixedly at an object held near, and a little 
above, the eyes. He thus proved that what is 
called mesmerism is due to upsetting the balance of 
the nervous system. The fixed stare, the repose of 
the body, and the exhaustion consequent upon sus- 
tained attention with attendant accelerated breath- 
ing, bring about profound stupor. He found that 
he had to deal with a hitherto unsuspected order 
of cerebral states, to which he gave the general 
term hypnotic (Greek hypnos=" sleep "). The re- 
sult was refutation — not, unhappily, as the facts 
collected in this book show, the extinguishment — 
of the fantastic beliefs which had their origin and 
support in mesmerism and kindred theories, and 
the throwing of light on the phenomena of trance, 
hallucinations, religious excitement, mania and 
spiritualism. The abnormal in psychical states 
finds explanation in the physical, and the discovery 
has enabled the judicious doctor to employ hypnosis 
with the frequent result of cure of nervous and other 
diseases, and even of reformation of bad habits. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 147 

Braid was following ancient methods. The Hindu 
of to-day (as did his remote ancestors) subdues the 
power of the senses and the passions by staring 
fixedly on the sign of the sacred word Aum — a dot in 
the centre of a semicircle. The Egyptian conjurer 
induces sleep in his subject by making him look 
intently at cabalistic signs on the middle of a 
white plate. From the earliest times religion and 
medicine have intermingled, and the old custom of 
Incubation — the sick sleeping in the shrine or 
temple, so that in their dreams the healing god may 
make known the cure — prevails in Greece and some 
parts of Southern Italy. " At first the healing 
shrines appear to have had close association with 
the secular medicine of the day, and to have repre- 
sented depositaries of empirical knowledge; but 
later they became hotbeds of jugglery and decep- 
tion." * Among the Dene Hareskins of North 
America the medicine-man repairs to the magic 
lodge to fast three days, bringing-on the " Sleep of 
the Shadow," so that he may prepare himself to 
drive out the disease demon from his patients. He 
blows on them, makes passes over them till they 
sleep, and, by a loud cry as they awake, it is proven 
that the demon has been exorcised. The practice 
of voluntary fasting to produce, among other results, 
an ecstatic condition, is world-wide, and goes far to 
explain the belief in visions from a spirit world which 
are common phenomena of the abnormal. Hence 
the purpose of the Chinese custom of fasting before 
sacrificing to the ancestral spirits was to prepare 

1 A System of Medicine. Edited by Sir William Osier, M.D., F.R.S. 
Vol. i., p. xvii. 



148 THE QUESTION 

the mind for communion with them, as the Roman 
Catholic and High Church sacramentarians abstain 
from food before swallowing the consecrated wafer. 
" It was in honour of Pan or Mercury, of Hecate 
or Isis, that Julian, on particular days, denied him- 
self the use of some particular food which might 
have been offensive to his tutelar deities. By these 
voluntary fasts he prepared his senses and his under- 
standing for the frequent and familiar visits with 
which he was honoured by the celestial powers." l 
A Taoist text speaks of fasting, so that the mind 
concentrates itself, to be thereby made fit for the 
reception of the god's revelation. The following 
Mohammedan recipe for summoning spirits is given 
in Klunzinger's Upper Egypt: — " Fast seven days 
in a lonely place and take incense with you . . . 
and read the chapter one thousand and one times 
from the Koran in the seven days, a certain number 
of readings; namely, for every day one of the five 
daily prayers. That is the secret, and you will see 
indescribable wonders: drums will be beaten beside 
you and flags hoisted over your head, and you will 
see spirits full of light and of beautiful and benign 
aspect." 2 

Moses received the Law from Jehovah on Sinai 
after he had fasted forty days and forty nights. For 
the same period Ezekiel, after the angel had fortified 
him with food and drink, went to Horeb, the mount 
of God, and awaited the divine revelation. Forty 
days and forty nights Jesus fasted in the desert, 
and when " he was afterward an hungered " there 

1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chapter xxiii., p. 465. (Prof. Bury's 
edition, 1909.) * P. 386. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 149 

came the apparition of Satan, victory over whom 
brought to Jesus visions of ministering angels. In 
the remarkable parallel of the temptation of 
Gautama, the Buddha, worn to a skeleton by self- 
privation, was approached by Mara, the Prince 
of Evil, with the promise of universal dominion. 
But the arch-demon had to retire baffled. Then 
guardian angels appeared to speak words of com- 
fort to the Buddha, and scatter flowers and pour 
sweet perfumes over him. The saying of Chry- 
sostom that fasting makes the soul lighter and 
provides it with wings to mount and soar has 
example in the story of many a holy man of old 
whose visions of angels and devils, of paradise and 
hell, are explained by the exhaustion of the nerve- 
centres induced by the weakness of a starved body. 
In this may be found the cause of a wonderful vision 
enjoyed by a doctor named Crewkhorne, of whom 
Froude relates that " he, before the three Bishops 
of Canterbury, Worcester, and Salisbury, confessed 
that he was rapt into heaven, where he saw the 
Trinity sitting on a pall or mantle of blue colour, 
and from the middle upward they were three bodies, 
and from the middle downward were they closed all 
three into one body." x With profound truth Sir 
E. B. Tylor says that " Bread and meat would have 
robbed the saint of many an angel's visit; the open- 
ing of the larder must many a time have closed the 
gates of heaven to his gaze." 2 

The links between mesmerism, somnambulism, 
clairvoyance, trance states and kindred pheno- 

1 History of England. Vol. ii., p. 343. 

2 Primitive Culture. Vol. ii., p. 415. 



150 THE QUESTION 

mena, are continuous. There have been collected 
during the past seventy years or more many stories 
of knowledge of things occurring at a distance not 
communicated through normal channels of which 
the clairvoyant had cognisance, and, still more 
important, of communication with spirits and the 
spirit world by trance mediums. As with all the 
examples of the various phenomena now dealt with, 
the generic types are few, hence there can be only 
tedium to the reader in multiplying stories whose 
central incidents are alike. They are what the folk- 
lorist calls " variants." 

Dealing with the clairvoyant group, there is the 
case, quoted by Sir W. F. Barrett in his Psychical 
Research, of a girl named Ellen Dawson, who had 
been subject to epileptic fits as a child, for which 
she had been successfully treated by a London 
doctor named Hands. He observed that, when in 
the trance state, she could apparently see objects 
without using her eyes. So he tried to cultivate her 
clairvoyant faculty, and it is asserted that she 
developed a power of accurately describing distant 
places and persons she had never seen with her 
normal vision. In The Zoist for 1845 (a periodical 
dealing with the theory of animal magnetism as a 
vital nerve fluid) two examples of the girl Dawson's 
powers are given. Mr. Hands filled the lids of two 
pill-boxes with cotton-wool and tied one over each 
of her eyes with broad ribbon, taking care that light 
was excluded by pressing the edges of the boxes close 
to the skin. He says: " Still she read and dis- 
tinguished as before. I now placed her in a room 
from which I had shut out every ray of light and 



CLAIRVOYANCE 151 

then presented her with some plates in Cuvier's 
Animal Kingdom; she described the birds and 
beasts and told accurately the colours of each, as I 
proved by going into the light to test her statements. 
She also distinguished the shades and hues of silks." 
On another occasion she correctly described Mr. 
Hands's birthplace, one hundred and forty miles 
from London. She described the church and the 
various monuments therein; also the house in 
which Mrs. Hands was staying. " When asked what 
Mrs. Hands was doing, Ellen said that she was play- 
ing cards and described the other persons present. 
Then she exclaimed : ' Mrs. Hands has won the 
game and is getting up from her chair ! ' All these 
details turned out to be perfectly correct. Another 
time she traced the whereabouts of some plate and 
jewels which had been stolen by a servant from her 
mistress." 1 A further example of clairvoyance is 
supplied by a Frenchman, Alexis Didier, brought to 
England by a M. Marcillet, whose integrity was 
vouched for by Dr. Elliotson, an early and careful 
investigator of mesmeric phenomena. Didier, ap- 
parently, in the first instance, was thrown into a 
deep trance; his eyes were then bandaged, gener- 
ally as follows: — A pad of leather was placed over 
each eye, then a handkerchief was tied diagonally 
across each; then a third handkerchief tied across 
them, and any possible spaces admitting light filled 
up with cotton-wool. Thus blindfolded, he played 
ecarte skilfully and quickly, knew not only his own 
cards, but his adversary's as well; played correctly 
with his own cards face downwards on the table and 

1 Pp. 156-158, 



152 THE QUESTION 

would frequently, by request, pick out any named 
card when the whole pack was face downward. 
Further, he would — though generally with his eyes 
unbandaged and merely closed — decipher words 
written in sealed envelopes, describe the contents of 
closed packets, and read words and sentences several 
pages deep in any book that might be handed to 
him. 1 Robert Houdin, the King of Conjurers in 
the middle of the last century, after paying two 
visits to Didier, was nonplussed. He testified 
" qu'il est tout a fait impossible que le hasard on 
l'adresse puisse jamais produire des effets aussi 
merveilleux." This verdict was endorsed by the 
Rev. Chancery Hare Townshend, a poet and well- 
known writer on Mesmerism, who paid a surprise 
visit to Didier. Townshend's house at Lausanne 
was accurately described, and in equal faithfulness 
of detail his house in London, even the servants 
there and the horses in the stables. 

Alexis had many friends to tap as sources of 
information; Marcillet was not his only confederate, 
and his chief successes were secured in card tricks 
in which every skilful conjurer scores. The late 
Dr. W. B. Carpenter attended some seances which 
he gave, and noticed his adeptness in educing such 
leading questions from his sitters as would help him 
to the information which he was assumed to reveal to 
them. Mr. Podmore's comment on the girl Dawson, 
whose clairvoyant exhibitions were witnessed by 
only a few selected observers, is that " something 
no doubt could have been gleaned by a cunning and 
unscrupulous person from the gossip of servants, 

1 Podmore: Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 143. 



CLAIRVOYANCE 153 

and in nearly every case a wide margin must be 
allowed for misdescription on the part of the 
narrator of the marvels." * She may well have 
heard her mistress talk of her birthplace; she knew 
that she played cards; she may have often dipped 
into Cuvier's book, with its attractive pictures; 
moreover, bandaging the eyes so as to exclude all 
possibility of seeing, as Mr. Podmore shows by 
examples which he cites, is not easy. 2 Dawson's 
success in tracing the stolen property may be 
ascribed to her knowledge of the haunts and habits 
of her dishonest fellow-servant. When the clair- 
voyants score a few successes in the tracing of lost 
or stolen goods, or when they reveal the nature and 
value of the securities in a locked safe, the sceptic 
will be confounded — but not till then. 3 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. i., p. 148. 

2 In the letter from an American conjurer (see ante, p. 124), he 
says : " If I recall rightly, Sir Oliver Lodge's first faith in • Telepathy ' 
was obtained by his experience with the late Washington Irving 
Bishop. I knew Bishop well. Learned all his tricks and have at the 
present the cap ('blindfold') which he used in Los Angeles, Cal. I 
can teach any bright boy of fourteen to do every one of his so-called 
mind-reading feats, even the blindfold street-driving tests." 

8 " Agaberta, a famous witch in Lapland, could represent to others 
what forms they most desired to see, show them friends absent, reveal 
secrets maximd omnium admiratione [to the greatest wonder of every- 
body]. And yet for all this subtilty of theirs, as Lipsius well observes, 
neither these Magicians nor Devils themselves can take away gold or 
letters out of mine or Crassus' chest . . . for they are base, poor, con- 
temptible fellows most part." — Burton. Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 
I., Sect. 3, Mem. 1, Subs. 3. 



IV 

CRYSTAL-GAZING 

CLAIRVOYANT and crystal-gazer make 
common contribution to the occult. The 
serious recognition of scrying 1 as possibly 
related to psychical phenomena by eminent 
physicists, and by the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, warrants reference to the subject. 

From the Proceedings of the Society we learn that 
glass balls for crystal-gazing can be purchased at 
its rooms in four sizes on ebonised stands, at 
from three shillings to eight shillings each; those 
three inches in diameter are also supplied hollow, to 
be filled with water, and are recommended as having 
been found at least equally good as specula with 
the solid. The Society expresses itself as being 
" grateful for accounts of any experiments which 
may be tried." In the same number of the Pro- 
ceedings in which these are advertised Sir Oliver 
Lodge has a paper explaining the conditions under 
which the hypnotic state may be induced. The use 
of crystal balls would appear to be helpful. He 
says: 

" It has long been known that in order to achieve 

1 " The practice of scrying, peeping or crystal-gazing has been re- 
vived in recent years." — Cock Lane and Common Sense, p. 212. By 
Andrew Lang. The earliest known use of the word dates from 1549. 
" Thomas Malfrey and a woman are scryers of the glasse." See New 
English Dictionary, s. v. 

154 



CRYSTAL-GAZING 155 

remarkable results in any department of intellectual 
activity the mind must be to some extent unaware 
of passing occurrences. To be keenly awake and 
* on the spot ' is a highly valued accomplishment, 
and for the ordinary purposes of mundane affairs is 
a far more useful state of mind than the rather hazy 
and absorbed condition which is associated with the 
quality of mind called genius, but it is not as effec- 
tive for brilliant achievement. When a poet or 
mathematician feels himself inspired, his senses are, 
I suppose, dulled or half asleep. ... It does not 
seem unreasonable to suppose that the state is 
somewhat allied to the initial condition of anaes- 
thesia — the somnambulic condition when, though 
the automatic processes of the body go on with 
greater perfection than usual, the conscious or 
noticing aspect of the mind is latent, so that the 
things which influence the person are apparently 
no longer the ordinary events which affect his peri- 
pheral organs, but either something internal or else 
something not belonging to the ordinarily known 
universe at all." 1 

In his booklet on Crystal-Gazing Mr. N. W. 
Thomas asks for any results of scrying; he says 
that " the crystal is apt to anticipate events," but 
he cannot be wholly acquitted of frivolity when he 
suggests that " moderate indulgence in the sport is 
no more harmful than an after-dinner snooze." 2 

Crystallomancy — one of the many modes of 
divination by cups, beryls and other gems, glass 
balls, magic mirrors, water in ponds or vessels, and 

1 Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research. Vol. x., part 26, 
p. 14. 3 Crystal-Gazing, p. 159. 



156 THE QUESTION 

other objects — is " as old as the hills," and has its 
votaries in all stages of culture. 

The Australian natives use a polished stone. 
Some of them believe that crystals are falling stars 
and invest them with magic properties. The 
Malagasy believe that the crystals fall from heaven 
when it thunders, and with them they scry things 
otherwise invisible. When Mr. Howitt put some 
teeth extracted from youths on their initiation in a 
bag containing a crystal, he was implored to remove 
them, lest magic should pass from the crystal to 
the teeth and injure the boys. 

The Queensland aborigines grind crystals to 
powder and use them as rain charms, as do the 
natives of Equatorial Africa, pouring water over 
them. The Maori use a drop of blood. The 
Apache Indian looks into a quartz crystal so that 
he can see what he wants to see. The Polynesians, 
when robbed, dig a hole in the floor of the hut, and, 
filling it with water, call in the medicine-man to see 
the vision of the thief, the idea being that the gods 
cause the spirit of the thief to pass over the water, 
which then reflects it. The Dyak medicine-man 
scrys in a crystal to find out the hiding-place of the 
soul, or the disease demon who has seized it. Some 
Red Indian medicine-men make their patients look 
into water to find out what things will cure them. 
The Iroquois put a crystal in a gourd of water, be- 
lieving that they will see the image of the man who 
has bewitched another. The same method for the 
same purpose is found among the Hebridean islanders 
to-day. The Zulus and the Shamans of Siberia are 
one with the ancient Romans in gazing into glass 



CRYSTAL-GAZING 157 

vessels filled with water. In Yucatan the diviner 
burns gum-copal before a crystal and recites a magic 
formula. Peering into , its clear depths, he learns 
the places of stolen articles, what is happening to 
the absent, and by what sorcerer sickness and trouble 
have come upon those who seek his aid. It is said 
that nearly every village in Yucatan has one of 
these stones. 1 

Allied in conception is an example of water 
divination in Pausanias: " In front of the sanctuary 
of Demeter is a spring. Between the spring and 
the temple is a stone wall, but on the outside there 
is a way down to the spring. Here there is an in- 
fallible mode of divination, not, however, for all 
matters, but only in cases of sickness. They tie a 
mirror to a fine cord, and let it down so far that it 
shall not plunge into the spring, but merely graze 
the surface of the water with its rim. Then, after 
praying to the goddess and burning incense, they 
look into the mirror, and it shows them the sick 
person living or dead, so truthful is this water." 2 
Scotch and Greek maidens to-day alike read their 
fortunes in the mirror, or in the water. Mr. Abbott 
heard a Salonika girl sing this love couplet: 

" A lump of gold shall I drop into the well, 
That the water may grow clear and I may see who my husband is 
to be." 3 

The mirror played a large part in Moslem divina- 

1 Crystal-Gazing, p. 44. By N. W. Thomas. 

2 Book VII., 2i, 12. (Sir J. G. Frazer's translation.) 

8 Macedonian Folk-lore, p. 52. And see Chapter VIII., on " Lekano- 
mancy " (divination by water in a dish or basin) in Mr. W. R. Halli- 
day's scholarly work on Greek Divination. 



158 THE QUESTION 

tion. This falls into line with the belief of modern 
scryers that the images do not appear on the mirror 
itself, but on a kind of vapour floating between 
the surface and the gazer's eye. The Egyptian 
magician of to-day performs with mirrors, but more 
often with ink placed in the palm of the hand. A 
well-known story of this method is told by Lane in 
his Customs of the Modern Egyptians. 

The English Consul-General sent for a magician 
to discover who among his servants was guilty of 
a theft. A boy was chosen by the Consul as the 
scryer, and peering into the ink poured into his 
hand, after he had seen various images, he described 
that of a man who was recognised as the culprit 
by the description which the boy gave. The thief 
confessed his crime. 

Kinglake had a different experience. The wizard 
traced mysterious figures in ink on a boy's palm, 
and Kinglake was asked to name the absent person 
whose form was to be made visible. He named his 
old headmaster, " flogging " John Keat of Eton. 
" ' Now what do you see? ' said the wizard to the 
boy. ' I see,' he answered, ' a fair girl with golden 
hair, blue eyes, pallid face and rosy lips.' There 
was a shot! The wizard, perceiving the grossness of 
his failure, declared that the boy must have known 
sin (for none but the innocent can see truth) and 
kicked him downstairs." x 

In Hindu ceremony the king was directed to 
cause his warriors before a battle to look two by 
two into a vessel of water over which verses from 
one of the sacred books, the Atharva Veda, had been 

1 Eothen, p. 301. (1845 edition.) 



CRYSTAL-GAZING 159 

recited, and if a warrior did not see his reflection 
he must not go to battle. The Buddhist monks of 
Tibet gaze into a bowl or a pool of water for divina- 
tion. The cup divination found among the South 
Sea Islanders may be related in conception to Kai 
Chosrus scrying in his magic cup, wherein the ruler 
of the world saw within it all that was to be; to 
the bowls in ancient Babylon by which, when filled 
with water, the conjurer divined the innocence or 
guilt of the accused; and to the divination by the 
cup in the history of Joseph, whereby my " lord 
divineth." 1 

Among the formula? for divinations in the Talmud 
one gives the directions to find out whether a man 
will survive the year. " Take silent water from a 
well on the eve of Hosha'anah Rabba, fill a clear 
glass vessel with it, put it in the middle of a room, 
then look into it: if he sees therein a face with the 
mouth open, he will live; but if the mouth is closed, 
he will die." And the Talmud has also a distinct 
formula for crystal-gazing, or, as it is phrased, 
" seeing the princes (demons) of the crystal." 2 

Despite the condemnation of Specularii as of 
Satanic origin by a synod of the fifth century, and 
by Thomas Aquinas and other fathers of the 
Church, and by the Faculty of Theology in Paris 
(in 1398), it was never suppressed. The passion to 
divine the future defies ecclesiasticism and science 
alike to do their best to quench it; and an enormous 
mass of mediaeval literature, with its magic formulae 

1 Genesis xliv. 5-15. 

* Hastings's Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Art. " Divina- 
tion (Jewish)." Vol. iv., p. 807. 



160 THE QUESTION 

and directions to ensure their efficacy, proves its 
persistence. 

A manuscript of the late fifteenth century runs 
thus: "To y e fydyng of theft or of the statt of 
fryndes or of tresure hyddyn or not hyddyn or of 
other thyngs whatsoever they be in y e word you 
shallte fyrst a chylde lawfullye borne w t XII years 
of age and a greatte crystall stone or byrrall holl 
and sound and lett y* be anoynted w* oylle olyve 
holowyd and then the chylde shall say after me." 
Then follow the old name charms. 1 

Wolsey had a magic crystal, and the Abbot of 
Abingdon reported to Cromwell that his officers had 
taken " a suspect parson with certeyne bokes of 
conjuraciers . . . consecrating of a crystall stone 
wherein a childe shall lokke and see many things." 
But most famous of all is the flat, oval, highly 
polished " shew-stone " of Dr. Dee, who was 
astrologer to Queen Elizabeth. He is in close link 
with the crystal-gazer of to-day, whose visions are 
accorded recognition in the Proceedings of the 
Society for Psychical Research. 2 Dee had well- 
earned repute as a scholar and mathematician; he 
had dabbled in alchemy, whence ultimately came 
trouble. In 1555 he was accused of practising sor- 
cery against Queen Mary's life. However, the Star 
Chamber acquitted him. A belief in crystallomancy 
as revealing the world of spirits led to his employing 
one Edward Kelly as " medium." Although he 
had lost both ears in the pillory, he enjoyed Dee's 
full confidence. Beginning the sittings with prayer, 
a custom which some modern mediums have followed, 

1 Thomas, p. 83. ' See Proceedings, March, 1895. 



CRYSTAL-GAZING 161 

adding hymns thereto, Kelly would start scrying 
and repeating to Dee all the wonderful things which 
he said that he saw. The hosts of heaven, the 
prophets with them, passed in glorious procession 
in that marvellous stone. Ultimately it came into 
the possession of Horace Walpole. Writing to Sir 
Horace Mann, he says: "In assisting Lord Vere 
to settle Lady Betty Germaine's auction, I found 
in an old catalogue of her collection this article, 
The Black Stone into which Dr. Dee used to call his 
Spirits. Lord Vere said that he knew of no such 
thing. This winter I was again employed by Lord 
Frederic Campbell, for I am an absolute auctioneer, 
to do him the same service about his father's collec- 
tion. Among other odd things he produced a 
round piece of shining black marble in a leathern 
case as big as the crown of a hat, and asked me 
what that could possibly be. I screamed out, ' Oh, 
Lord, I am the only man in England that can tell 
you! It is Dr. Dee's black stone!' It certainly 
is. Lady Betty had formerly given away or sold, 
time out of mind, for she was a thousand years old, 
that part of the Peterborough collection that con- 
tained Natural Philosophy. . . . Lord Frederic 
gave it to me, and if it was not this magical stone, 
which is only of highly polished coal, that preserved 
my chattels, in truth I cannot guess what did." 
Walpole humorously attributes to the magic of 
the stone the fact that when his house in Arlington 
Street had been broken-into, the burglars over- 
looked " a little table with drawers and the money 
and a writing-box with banknotes." x A rock- 

1 24th March, 1771. Vol. viii., pp. 21, 23. (Toynbee's edition.) 



162 THE QUESTION 

crystal ball said to be Dr. Dee's shew-stone is in 
the British Museum, but there is no proof that 
it is genuine. He may have had more than one. 

It needs " more than heaven-sent moments for 
this skill " ; hence there are published, from time 
to time, hand-books of formulas for scrying. Such 
a one is Crystal-Gazing and Clairvoyance: embrac- 
ing Practical Instructions in the Art, History and 
Philosophy of this Ancient Science. With Dia- 
grams. By John Melville. 1897. Therein we 
learn that beryl (Rossetti makes skilful use of this 
belief in his poem, Rose Mary) is the favourite 
medium of divination by means of transparent 
bodies. It has, we are told, special magnetic af- 
finities, and is under the zodiacal sign Libra, which 
is related to the human kidneys, whose healthy con- 
dition is essential to sound crystallomancy — we might 
add, and to much else besides in our bodies. To 
ensure perfect cleanliness of the crystal it should be 
boiled in brandy and water — such use of a diluted 
terrestrial spirit as aid to seeing the celestial spirit 
is interesting to note. The scryer must preface its 
use by prayer and fasting, which last-named act of 
self-denial, as has been shown, is a productive cause 
of hallucination. It is also well that he take a few 
drops of the herb succory when the moon is waxing, 
whereby he may be rewarded by seeing images or 
pictures bringing information as to something past, 
present and future, which the gazer has no other 
chance of knowing. The mystic names which are 
engraved on the pedestal or frame supporting the 
crystal should be magnetised by passes made with 
the right hand and then the connection between 



CRYSTAL-GAZING 163 

the visible and invisible worlds is complete. The 
sensitiveness of the crystal is increased if similar 
passes are made with the left hand. " The Magnet- 
ism with which the surface of the mirror or crystal 
becomes charged collects there from the eyes of the 
gazer [the italics are the author's] and from the 
universal ether, the Brain being, as it were, switched 
on to the Universe, the crystal being the medium." 
There we have the whole modus operandi of crystal- 
gazing, with that of telepathy, and effect is given 
to the text by an illustration of a man seated at a 
table, his eyes and kidneys governed by Libra; 
his neck and cerebellum by Taurus, while he rains 
human magnetism into space. 

One of the late Andrew Lang's many hobbies was 
crystallomancy. He has a chapter on " Crystal 
Visions, Savage and Civilised " in his Making of 
Religion; one on " Scrying or Crystal- Gazing " in 
his Cock Lane and Common Sense, and he con- 
tributed a lengthy Introduction to Mr. Thomas's 
book on the subject. He says: "I have stared 
vainly at a glass ball for long, and many a time, 
but no more felt sleepy than I saw pictures." (I 
may add that my experience with a ball which he 
lent me was the same.) In this Introduction he 
quotes from "Miss X's " (Miss Goodrich-Freer's) 
paper on crystal-gazing which was published in the 
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 
but his best cases are supplied by a friend known 
as "Miss Angus." Here is one: "I was sitting 
beside a young lady whom I had never before seen 
or heard of. She asked if she might look into my 
crystal, and while she did so I happened to look over 



164 THE QUESTION 

her shoulder and saw a ship tossing on a very heavy, 
choppy sea, although land was still visible in the 
dim distance. That vanished, and as suddenly a 
little house appeared with five or six (I forget now 
the exact number I then counted) steps leading up 
to the door. On the second step stood an old man 
reading a newspaper. In the front of the house 
was a field of thick stubbly grass, where some lambs, 
I was going to say, but they were more like very 
small sheep, were grazing. When the scene van- 
ished the young lady told me I had vividly described 
a spot in Shetland where she and her mother were 
soon going to spend a few weeks." * 

This is supplied by " Miss X " : "I happened to 
want the date of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which I 
could not recall, though feeling sure that I knew it, 
and that I associated it with some event of import- 
ance. When looking in the crystal some hours 
later I found a picture of an old man, with long 
white hair and beard, dressed like a Lyceum Shy- 
lock, and busy writing in a large book with tarnished 
massive clasps. I wondered much who he was and 
what he could possibly be doing and thought it a 
good opportunity of carrying out a suggestion which 
had been made to me of examining objects in the 
crystal with a magnifying-glass. The glass revealed 
to me that my old gentleman was writing in Greek, 
though the lines faded away as I looked, all but the 
characters he had last traced, the Latin numerals 
LXX. Then it flashed into my mind that he was 
one of the Jewish elders at work on the Septuagint, 
and that its date, 277 B.C., would serve equally well 

1 Making of Religion, p. 97. 



CRYSTAL-GAZING 165 

for Ptolemy Philadelphia. It may be worth while 
to add, though the fact was not in my conscious 
memory at the moment, that I had once learned a 
chronology on a mnemonic system which substi- 
tuted letters for figures and that the memoria 
technica for this date was : ' Now Jewish Elders 
indite a Greek copy. 5 " 

Perhaps the results of modern scrying may be 
represented in the report of her experience by the 
late Mrs. Verrall, who, although she describes her- 
self as a good vizualiser with the faculty of embody- 
ing her ideas in pictorial form, admits that her crystal 
visions " are mostly quite trivial and purposeless." 

The interest of crystallomancy lies in its associa- 
tion with phenomena associated with the trance 
state, in which, perhaps, may be found justification 
for the sale of glass balls by the Society for Psychical 
Research, and for Sir Oliver Lodge's warning against 
being " keenly awake." 

In the section on Crystallomancy in Psychical 
Research 1 Sir W. F. Barrett, after citing historical 
references to its practice among ancient peoples, 
more particularly one from an Arabian writer of 
the thirteenth century who argued that " the 
diviner sees not with his ordinary eyesight, but with 
his soul," comments as follows : — " One can hardly 
believe this was written seven centuries ago, so 
admirably does it describe the facts and probably 
the true explanation of crystal vision, a transcen- 
dental, or spiritual perception rather than the 
normal sense perception." In chorus to this Sir 
Oliver Lodge says: " In these cases of crystal vision, 

*P. 143. 



166 THE QUESTION 

trance utterance, clairvoyance and the like . . . 
it is possible that the clairvoyant is responding to 
some unknown world mind of which he forms a 
part: that the real agent is neither himself nor any 
other living person." x Thus can the scrying for- 
tune-tellers, when haled before magistrates and fined, 
with alternative of imprisonment, plead the authority 
of scientists as warrant for their pretensions. 

1 Survival of Man, p. 73. 



TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 

THE crystal-gazer has an advantage over the 
telepathist in his possession of a material 
vehicle whose " revelations " are brought 
pefore him in visible form. But this in no wise 
affects the conviction of the larger number of 
Spiritualists that telepathy is a verified pheno- 
menon. The attitude of the Society for Psychical 
Research, on the whole, has been one of commend- 
able caution as to acceptance of evidence which 
appears to establish proof of the supernormal, but 
many of its prominent members have committed 
themselves to belief in telepathy, by which is meant 
communication between mind and mind otherwise 
than through the material channel of the senses. 
One of the most prominent among these, the late 
F. W. H. Myers, said that " the establishment of 
thought transference — already rising within meas- 
urable distance of proof — was its primary aim, with 
hypnotism as its second study, and with many 
another problem ranged along its dimmer horizon." 1 
In his Survival of Man Sir Oliver Lodge says: 
" We call the process telepathy — sympathy at a 
distance: we do not understand it. What is the 
medium of communication? Is it through the air, 
like the tuning-forks, or through the ether, like the 

1 Fragments of Prose and Poetry. Essay on "Edmund Gurney." 

167 



168 THE QUESTION 

magnets; or is it something non-physical and 
exclusively psychical? No one as yet can tell 
you. . . . Meanwhile, we must plainly say tele- 
pathy strikes us as a spontaneous occurrence of 
that intercommunication between mind and mind 
which for want of a better term we at present style 
thought transference." * 

In his Psychical Research Sir W. F. Barrett says 
that " although not officially recognised by science, 
no doubt of the reality of thought transference can 
be left on the mind of any diligent and thoughtful 
student, however critical he may be." 2 Then, 
striking a sort of pulpit note, the professor sinks 
himself in the preacher, and adds that while tele- 
pathy renders " a purely materialistic philosophy 
untenable, it affords a rational basis for prayer and 
inspiration and gives us a distant glimpse of the 
possibility of communion without language, not only 
between men of various races and tongues, but be- 
tween every sentient creature which, if not attain- 
able here, may await us all in the future state when 
we shall know even as we are known." 3 Properly 
dismissing as valueless the oft-quoted analogy sought 
to be set up between wireless telegraphy and tele- 
pathy, he adds: "How telepathy is propagated we 
have not the remotest idea. Certainly it is not 
likely to be through any material medium or by any 
physical agency known to us." 4 In such fashion 
do these two eminent physicists invoke the un- 
known to explain the non-existent! 

Professor Barrett will surely accord to Sir Ray 
Lankester the reputation of being " a diligent and 

1 P. 65. * P. 68. • P. 69. * P. 107. 



TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 169 

thoughtful student," and, more than that, of a man 
of science who can speak " as one having authority 
and not as the scribes." And this is his deliberate 
judgment: "As to telepathy, it is simply a boldly 
invented word for a supposed phenomenon which 
has never been demonstrated — namely, the com- 
munication of one human mind with another by 
other means than the sense organs. It is an unfair 
and unwarranted draft on the credit of science which 
its signatories have not met by the assignment of 
any experimental proofs. There is not one man of 
science, however mystic and credulous his trend, 
among those who pass this word ' telepathy ' on to 
the great unsuspecting, newspaper-reading public 
who will venture to assert that he can show to me 
or to any committee of observers experimental 
proof of the existence of the thing to which this 
portentous name is given." x In his Kingdom of 
Man Sir Ray Lankester further comments on this 
mythical phenomenon: 

" The power which we have gained of making an 
instrument oscillate in accordance with a predeter- 
mined code of signalling, although detached and a 
thousand miles distant, does not really lend any 
new support to the notion that the old-time beliefs 
of thought transference and second sight are more 
than illusions based on incomplete observation and 
imperfect reasoning. For the important factors in 
such human intercourse — namely, a signalling in- 
strument and a code of signals — have not been dis- 
covered as yet in the structure of the human body, 
and have to be consciously devised and manufactured 

1 Letter to The Westminster Gazette, 15th December, 1903. 



170 THE QUESTION 

by men in the only examples of thought transference 
over long distances at present discovered, or laid 
bare to experiment and observation." x 

In his lecture on " Mental Education " delivered 
by Faraday in 1854 at the Royal Institution, he asks: 
" What have the snails at Paris told us from the 
snails at New York? " To an acceptable reprint of 
the volume containing that and other lectures Sir 
Ray Lankester adds some enlightening notes, among 
these being given an explanation of Faraday's cryp- 
tic question: " According to an article in Chambers's 
Journal, 1851, a translation from the French of a 
M. Jules Alix, two French experimenters had 
discovered that individuals of the common snail 
have a mysterious sympathy with one another, 
and actually influence at a distance and de- 
termine the movements of other snails — even at 
a great distance. These experimenters are related 
to have shown that snails kept under observation in 
New York cause ' sympathetic ' movements corre- 
sponding to their own in similar snails kept in 
Paris. The ' experimenters ' state that they sup- 
pose that threads like the gossamer of spiders issue 
from snails and keep them in communication with 
one another, and that these threads are infinitely fine 
and invisible and can be extended to such vast 
length as to connect snails separated from one 
another by the Atlantic Ocean. Accordingly, the 
' discoverers ' of this invisible communication be- 
tween widely separated snails introduce for their 
pretended discovery the name Pasilalinic — which, 
being translated, is ' universal talking — sympathetic 

1 P. 88. 



TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 171 

compass.' The whole story is obviously rubbish. 
But whether it was a hoax which was played on 
the editor of Chambers's Journal, or a jocose parody 
of the effusions of the mesmerists and ' odylists ' of 
the day, does not appear. Had it first appeared 
in recent years it might reasonably be regarded as 
a burlesque of the assertions of the believers in 
' thought transference ' and ' brain waves,' which is 
fairly matched by the word ' Pasilalinic' " 1 

In a letter to The Westminster Gazette of 26th 
November, 1907, Sir H. B. Donkin wrote as 
follows : — " As regards telepathy, I assert that 
there were two occasions (I think in the winter of 
1882-83) when outside critics were invited by the 
Psychical Research Society to witness and apply 
tests to certain ' telepathic ' experiments carried on 
at the Society's meetings in Westminster. On one 
occasion the tests, applied to prevent possible audi- 
tory communications, put a stop to the phenomena; 
on the other, similar prevention of visual communi- 
cations had a like effect. In the published Proceed- 
ings of the Society which were sent to me for review 
some years afterwards by the editor of a well- 
known weekly no mention was made in the reports 
of these meetings of the presence of the critics or 
of the consequent cessation of the phenomena." 

In a more recent letter 2 Sir H. B. Donkin repeats 
his charge against telepathists that when they are 
challenged to produce proofs, these are never forth- 
coming. " Scientific men," he adds (other than 
those of the small group specified by Sir Oliver 

1 Science and Education, p. 71. 2 Times, 1st December, 1914. 



172 THE QUESTION 

Lodge 1 ), "several of whom are intimately ac- 
quainted with the Psychical Research Society's 
publications from the beginning and have had 
personal experience of ' facts ' of the kind alleged, 
fail to recognise any facts which cannot be readily 
explained, or referred to well-known causes, with- 
out recourse to the purely fanciful invention of 
' telepathy.' They hold that all the evidence pro- 
duced in support of telepathy is valueless as proof, 
not only to hypercritical (or 'orthodox') scientists, 
but also to men of ordinary common sense who ask 
for a proof of a new ' fact ' before they believe 
in it." 

In his Hypnotism and Treatment by Suggestion 
Dr. J. Milne Bramwell, a specialist on the subject, 
says : " During the last twenty years I have searched 
for evidence of telepathy and also taken part in the 
experiments of other observers; the results, however, 
have been invariably negative." 2 The late Sir T. 
S. Clouston, referring to the studies of manifesta- 
tions of mind outside of material agencies and 
relationships initiated by the Society for Psychical 
Research, says : " That kind of study has not as yet 
formulated any laws which are invariable, so that 
it cannot be regarded as within scientific ground. 
What we can formulate definitely is that brain is 
the vehicle of mind in the known universe, and 
its only proved vehicle so far as the proved 
facts go." 3 

1 Balfour Stewart, P. G. Tait, Sir W. F. Barrett, Alfred Russel 
Wallace, Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Crookes. (Letter to The 
Times, 25th November, 1914.) 

2 P. 118. 

• Quarterly Review, " Mind-Cures," January, 1913, p. 121. 



TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 173 

It is in the occurrence of coincidences that tele- 
pathy finds specious support. Bacon's shrewd 
comment on the inferences drawn from " Dreames 
and Predictions of Astrologie " is to be borne in 
mind: "First that Men marke when they hit and 
never marke when they misse." x The myriad 
number of dreams unfulfilled count as nothing 
against one dream that comes true, and it would be 
little short of miraculous if, in the crowded incidents 
of our lives, a certain proportion of them were not 
coincidental with some happenings elsewhere. 

Careful sifting of the stories told in proof of tele- 
pathy establishes the fact that those in which some 
flaw fatal to the proof is not detected are few in 
number, if any. It is not a question of wilful in- 
accuracy or wilful distortion, but of defects due to 
the treachery of memories, especially in regard to 
what is the essential thing, correctness of dates and 
details. Anxiety concerning the absent relative or 
friend begets premonitions which, if they happen to 
be fulfilled, throw aught else into the shade. A large 
majority of cases of assumed telepathic communi- 
cations, especially where accident or death have be- 
fallen the absent, have, on close examination, been 
found not to synchronise. A whole system of belief 
in thought transference is built on the slender 
foundation of dreams about persons, distance from 
whom emphasises solicitude, and to whom some 
dreaded disaster has come at or about the time 
when they were in the thoughts or dreams of the 
absent. Until the experimental proofs, on which Sir 
Ray Lankester and Sir H. B. Donkin logically in- 

1 Essayes, XXXV. " Of Prophecies." 



174. THE QUESTION 

sist are producible, nothing more need be said on 
the subject. 1 

A Hallucination is a false perception; seeing or 
hearing that which has no objective reality. It is 
due to temporary or permanent disorder of the 
brain; to the disturbance of the balance of that 
marvellously intricate organ, whereby illusions and 
delusions are created. 

The myriads of impressions which are conducted 
by the nerves to the millions upon millions of brain- 
cells — by what process is unknown — are registered 
in them, and are recallable at will by memory. 
Thus are brought back past trains of thought and 
past states of feeling: in brief, whatever impres- 
sions have been conveyed and stored-up. In 
healthy brains these impressions, when recalled, ap- 
pear in ordered relation ; in the unhealthy brain, with 
its element of the morbid, they appear in confused 
unrelation. To know the working of the normal 
brain is to have the key to understand its 
abnormal working. There is no warrant for seek- 
ing cause of hallucination other than in the regis- 
tered images in the brain, together with altered 
states of consciousness. Both functional and 
organic trouble may involve seeing objects where 
there is no object, and of hearing voices where there 
are no voices. When we know that what is seen 
or heard has no real existence, we have a sane 

1 Few have the time to wade through the records of the Proceedings 
of the Society for Psychical Research and other extensive literature 
of telepathy. But in his valuable Evidence for the Supernatural Dr. 
Tuckett supplies materials, notably in chapter iv. and the Appendices 
J and R, which will suffice for the general inquirer. 



TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 175 

hallucination; but when we think that what we see 
or hear is real, that way lies madness, or what is 
near akin to it. A temporary hallucination can be 
brought about by hypnotism, when the hypnotised 
subject believes what he is told and acts accord- 
ingly — e.g. fondles a pillow which he is told is a 
baby, or smells an imaginary bunch of flowers, or 
drinks neat brandy as if it were water. Under the 
hypnotic state the power of suggestion, which, more 
or less, rules all our lives far more than we realise, 
is largely increased. Expectancy of a sensation will 
sometimes cause the sensation; this has been my 
experience when troubled with neuralgia. In an 
article on " Hallucinations of the Senses " 1 Dr. 
Maudsley quotes from John Hunter as saying of 
himself: " I am confident that I can fix my atten- 
tion to any part until I have a sensation in that 
part." Sir Isaac Newton said that he could at any 
time call up a spectrum of the sun in the dark by 
intense direction of his mind to the idea, and Balzac 
alleged that when he wrote the story of the poisoning 
of one of his characters by arsenic he had so distinct 
a taste of the poison in his mouth afterwards that 
he was himself poisoned and vomited his dinner. 

In the article quoted above, Sir Thomas Clouston 
tells a story illustrating uncontrollable action, rend- 
ering the subject incapable of resisting suggestion. 
A mysterious hysterical disorder 2 known as latah 
breaks out at intervals among the Malay people of 

1 Fortnightly Review, September, 1878, p. 376. 

2 A full description of this disease is given in Sir Hugh Clifford's 
Studies in Brown Humanity, p. 189, and for similar symptoms see 
chapter xv., on "Arctic Hysteria," in M. A. Czaplicka's Aboriginal 
Siberia. 



176 THE QUESTION 

Borneo. Here is an example of it : " The cook of 
a coasting steamer had his baby brought to him when 
the ship was in port. He was known to be intensely 
devoted to, and proud of, the child. It was also 
known to his shipmates that he had latah. When 
he was nursing the baby in his arms on the deck one 
of the Malay crew came along with a billet of wood 
which he pretended to nurse in his arms like a baby. 
Next he began to toss the billet in the air, catching 
it as it fell, knowing that the unfortunate father, 
unable to resist, would be fascinated into imitating 
him. This the poor victim did, tossing his precious 
baby up towards the awning and catching it again, 
loathing and dreading to do so, yet compelled by 
his latah state to keep time with his tormentor. 
Suddenly the sailor opened his arms and let the 
billet fall on the deck. Unable to resist, the mis- 
erable father did likewise: the baby fell heavily on 
the deck and died." 

History abounds with examples of the power of 
collective hallucinations; all crowds are credulous; 
easy victims of false perceptions. Professor Jastrow 
tells of a performer who made the gesture of throw- 
ing a ball into the air, keeping it in his hands. Of 
one hundred and sixty-five children present at the 
show, seventy-eight declared that they saw the ball 
go up and disappear. 1 As for the equally easy 
deception of adults, the reader will find, in addition 
to the cases of collective deception at seances already 
quoted, many cogent examples in Gustave le Bon's 
The Crowd, to which should be added that of the 
report of the appearance of angel bowmen, led by 

1 Fact and Fable in Psychology, p. 117. 



TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 177 

St. George, to aid the retreat of our troops from 
Mons. It was the outcome of an imaginary story * 
told by an ingenious writer, Mr. Arthur Machen, 
which was converted by the popular belief in the 
existence of these mythological creatures into an 
actual phenomenon, some of the officers and soldiers 
declaring that they saw these pseudo-celestials. 2 
If they were real factors in ensuring victory, their 

1 It appeared in The Evening News of 29th September, 1914. 

1 Two organs of Spiritualism, The Occult Review and Light, asked 
Mr. Machen whether the story had any foundation, to which he replied 
in the negative. The clerical editors of several parish magazines plied 
him with requests for the exact authorities, and on his assurance that 
" the tale was pure invention " one of them wrote to suggest that it 
must be true, and that Mr. Machen's " share in the matter must surely 
have been confined to the elaboration and decoration of a veridical 
history." Credence was given to a statement that " dead Prussians had 
been found on the battlefield with arrow wounds in their bodies ! " The 
story became a text for sermons, subject of correspondence and 
numerous articles in the religious papers. " It is all," says Mr. Machen, 
"somewhat wonderful: one can say that the whole affair is a psycho- 
logical phenomenon of considerable interest, fairly comparable with the 
great Russian delusion of last August and September." (Introduction 
to The Bowmen, p. 22. 1915.) One fatuous and benighted example of 
the letters which the fiction elicited appeared in The Outlook of 7th 
August, 1915. Here it is, both for tears and laughter: 



THE ANGELS AT MONS 

(To the Editor of The Outlook) 

7th August, 1915. 

Sib, — I have read with interest your paragraph on the " Angels at 
Mons." I firmly believe that they appeared as stated by our soldiers; 
the Bible is full of the ministration of angels. " Are they not all 
ministering spirits ? " " He shall give His angels charge over thee." 
Yet when He does, the greatest amazement and unbelief is expressed. 
Personally I have not the slightest doubt that the angels fought for us 
at Mons and also at Ypres. St. Peter was delivered from prison by 
the ministry of angels, and those who will take the trouble to look 
through the Bible will find constant mention of the min istry of angels. 



178 THE QUESTION 

intermittent intervention might well become constant, 
to our advantage. But " the prophets prophesy 
falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; 
and my people love to have it so." * 

We have seen that Emanuel Swedenborg declared 
that there appeared to him on an evening when he 
had dined " not wisely, but too well," a man, who, 
returning the next night, declared himself to be 
" God the Creator and Redeemer of the World." 
Clearly Swedenborg, who seems to have been in 
no wise disconcerted by so unusual a visitor, was 
the victim of a waking hallucination induced by 
dyspepsia due to overeating or overdrinking. Had 
he been more moderate in this, there would have 
been no revelation, and no Swedenborgians. Wher- 
ever there is hypersensitiveness, or any morbid 
tendency, there are the elements of hallucination. 
Socrates had often in his ears the divine voice 
telling him to act or not to act; delusions, both 
of eye and ear, troubled Luther; numerous are the 
legends of beatific visions, as of the Virgin to Loyola, 
to Raphael, and to the little peasant maid at Lourdes ; 
numerous, also, are the legends of voices, as from 
heaven, which inspired St. Paul, St. Teresa and 
Joan of Arc; even virile old Hobbes was haunted 
in the dark by faces of the dead, and my own 
experience, sometimes, before getting to sleep, is to 
see a row of leering, ugly faces which quickly van- 

We pray daily — at least I hope so — for help in our troubles; yet when 
it arrives we doubt and refer to " psychologists." Personally I am a 
" common or garden " person, yet twice I have been saved from certain 
death by the ministry of angels. — I am, Sir, yours, etc., 

E. R. 
1 Jeremiah v. 31. 



TELEPATHY AND HALLUCINATION 179 

ish if my thoughts are turned elsewhere. Oddest 
of all hallucinations was that of the woman at- 
tacked by peritonitis who declared that she could 
feel that a church congress was being held in- 
side her. 1 The hallucinations induced by fasting, 
crystal-gazing and other methods have been dealt 
with in a previous section. 

In 1889 the Society for Psychical Research ap- 
pointed a Committee to make " a statistical inquiry 
into the spontaneous hallucinations of the sane." 2 
Seventeen thousand answers to the following ques- 
tion were received: — "Have you ever, when believ- 
ing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid 
impression of seeing or being touched by a living 
being or an inanimate object, or of hearing a voice; 
which impression, so far as you could discover, was 
not due to any external physical cause?" 

Of the above-named number, 15,316 answers 
were in the negative, and 1,684 in the affirmative; 
the percentage of the affirmatives, the larger 
number of which came from women, was 9.9. Of 
the 1,684 who reported having experienced sensory 
hallucinations, 322 affirmed that they had seen 
apparitions of the human figure, four that they 
had seen angels. Of these 326, thirty-two reported 
death coincidences; in eleven cases the person seen 
proved to be on his death-bed, though he did not 
die within the twelve hours taken by the Committee 
as the limit for death coincidences. Presumably, 
they had to allow for difference of clocks. 

1 Hallucinations, p. 2. By Edward Parish. 

1 Proceedings, S.P.R. " Report on the Census of Hallucinations," 
pp. 25-422. August, 1894. 



180 THE QUESTION 

Upon these thirty-two cases they thus comment 
in the concluding paragraph of their report: " Be- 
tween deaths and apparitions of the dying person 
a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. 
This we hold as a proved fact. The discussion of 
its full implications cannot be attempted in this 
paper — nor, perhaps, exhausted in any age." * 

The net figures afford a very narrow base on 
which to erect so wide and momentous a conclusion, 
and the collection of data must be extended over a 
much larger number of persons before so definite 
a pronouncement can have serious consideratioji. 

1 P. 394. 



VI 

PSYCHICAL MEDIUMS 

AMONG the more thoughtful class of spirit- 
r\ ualists interest is transferred from what may 
be called the more inconclusive and chal- 
lenged phenomena to those which may supply an 
answer to the questions: " If a man die, shall he 
live again? " and "If there be a future life, under 
what conditions do the departed exist? " Here 
are implied aspirations which lie outside all dogmas, 
because they are common to the majority of man- 
kind. (Personal immortality has no place in the 
teachings of Buddha, nor in Early Judaism.) It 
might be thought that, in seeking satisfaction of these, 
the spiritualist would justify the name which he has 
appropriated by finding the sources of the assurance 
for which he longs within himself. He might thus 
reach the height whereon the mystic rests, and realise 
the significance of what the man whom he reveres as 
the chief apostle of his creed expresses in his noble 
poem, Saint Paul: 

" Whoso has felt the Spirit of the Highest, 
Cannot confound, nor doubt Him nor deny; 
Yea with one voice, O world, tho' thou deniest, 
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I." 

Contrariwise, he must needs disguise himself 
(since the experts whom he consults so advise him), 
and seeking a woman who " hath a familiar spirit," 

181 



182 THE QUESTION 

say to her: "I pray thee, divine unto me by the 
familiar spirit and bring me him up whom I shall 
name unto thee." These were the words of Saul to 
the Witch of Endor, earliest of mediums, concern- 
ing whom Reginald Scot, in shrewd and clenching 
judgment, wrote three hundred and thirty years 
ago: "He that looketh into it advisedlie shall see 
that Samuel was not raised from the dead, but that 
it was an illusion or cousenage practised by the 
witch." x Probably she would nowadays rank as 
a professional medium, but nothing is said about 
any fee paid to her by Saul. The private medium 
of our time makes no charge for her services; the 
professional's charges vary, from half-a-guinea to 
one guinea for each sitting. Florence Cook had the 

1 Discoverie of Witchcraft, chapter viii., p. 112. (1886 reprint.) 

The letter from which I cull the following extract might have been 
written before the time of Reginald Scot. But it appeared as recently 
as the 14th April, 1917, in The Saturday Review. The writer is the 
Rev. William Wilson, Rusholme, Manchester: 

" The case of Samuel and the Witch of Endor, and the deceased, or 
the supposed deceased, prophet, who appeared to St. John, were, no 
doubt, exceptions used for a special and extraordinary purpose by 
God Himself. Sir Oliver Lodge and those who follow him are giving 
heed to the evil, seducing, and soul-ensnaring and soul-destroying 
spirits who personate deceased friends and relatives. 

" Satan, though not omniscient nor almighty, has great power, author- 
ity, and knowledge; he and his agents often know the history of 
deceased lives, and so are often well able to personate deceased people 
and to reveal family and other secrets through various mediums, and 
possibly also by table-turning, etc. ' By their fruits ye shall know 
them ' and their system. A system which denies and falsifies Chris- 
tianity, and which, at least in America, teaches, if not practises, free 
love, is not and cannot be beneficial, good, moral, civilised, or divine, 
either in origin, outlook, or practice, or general principle and outworking 
amongst men and women on earth. 

" All such profane research into hidden and veiled mysteries should 
be most carefully shunned and avoided by all good citizens, philan- 
thropists, and true scientists and Christian people generally. Such 
wicked research is forbidden by God." 



PSYCHICAL MEDIUMS 183 

good fortune to be subsidised by a wealthy believer, 
so that she might be free to give her services wher- 
ever required. Like Home and Moses, she invited 
her guests. Doubtless the terms are regulated by 
the market demand, or, as in the case of the founder 
of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy, by divine direction. 

She tells us : " When God impelled me to set a 
price on my instruction in Christian Science Mind- 
healing, I could think of no financial equivalent for 
an impartation of a knowledge of that divine power 
which heals, but I was led to name three hundred 
dollars." " Moved," she says, " by a strange provi- 
dence," she raised her charges in a little while to that 
sum to include only twelve lessons, and these were 
reduced in later years, in Boston, to seven. 1 

Discreetly, not concerning himself with exposed 
tricksters of the Slade and Davenport type, Sir 
W. F. Barrett says that he has " not the remotest 
idea what peculiar physiological state constitutes a 
medium: sex, age and education are alike im- 
material." 2 No very profound study of human 
psychology is needful to enlighten him. Charitably 
assuming absence of deliberate fraud, given an 
unstable nervous system, with resulting weakness 
of control of the higher brain-centres, the abnormal 
has full play; the man or woman thus afflicted be- 
comes a creature of impulses, often self-deceived, 
non-moral, dreamy and victim of hallucinations. 
Age would appear to count in impairment of me- 
diumistic power. Home is said to have had warn- 
ing from his controls that his powers of receiving 

1 The Faith and Works of Christian Science, p. 71. By Stephen Paget. 
* Psychical Research, p. 212. 



184 THE QUESTION 

communications from them were waning, and con- 
cerning Mrs. Piper, Sir Oliver Lodge says: " Since 
this book [The Survival of Man] first appeared 
[1909] her power appears to have vanished. Her 
controls have said a carefully considered farewell 
and no trance will now come on. Whether the 
suspension or inhibition is permanent or temporary, 
I cannot say. At one time I thought it likely to 
be permanent, and it would not be surprising after 
her highly valuable thirty years of service." 1 

A solution of Sir W. F. Barrett's puzzlement is 
offered by one Count Solovovo, who suggests that 
the spiritual phenomena are produced, " not so 
much by psychic force — whatever that may mean 
— as by ephemeral, enigmatic protuberances, pro- 
jected momentarily from the medium's body; pro- 
tuberances of various degrees of density — from fluid 
to hard — which spring into existence and vanish in 
the twinkling of an eye. ... If so, we can easily 
understand that light may have a deteriorating 
influence on these ephemeral organisms." " The 
Count's speculations," says Mr. Carrington, who 
prints them in his Personal Experiences in Spiritual- 
ism, " are more or less borne out by facts." 2 

Such imbecile stuff is quoted only to be dismissed. 
In the case of the best attested mediums, in whom 
some genuineness of self -conviction may be present, 
we hear nothing of projections of the pseudopod 
kind, nor of aura, odylic force or " emission of 
force " 8 from their bodies. The essential thing, 

1 P. 203. (1915 edition.) a P. 238. 

* Drama of Love and Death, p. 160. By Edward Carpenter. 
In an article in The Occult Review of June, 1917, on " The Psychic 
Significance of the Cat," that animal is said to have " a green aura." 



PSYCHICAL MEDIUMS 185 

assuming some sort of belief in, or some desire to 
test for oneself, the medium's possession of super- 
normal power, is how shall he be approached? In 
an article in The Nineteenth Century of January, 
1917* Mr. J. Arthur Hill answers that question. 
You go [not forgetting to take the fee] to "a 
normal clairvoyant who, by becoming mentally 
passive, can somehow get true hallucinations, so 
to speak, of the sitter's deceased friends and rela- 
tions; or who, by going into trance, can establish 
still closer communication, a friend or relative 
sometimes apparently speaking direct through the 
medium, or at least sending messages through the 
regular control. 1 ... A sitting often contains a 
number of apparently unconnected statements, the 
connection or the rationale of which becomes ap- 
parent only by having a series of sittings and care- 
fully collecting the reports, hence the importance 
of contemporaneous verbatim notes which I make 
in shorthand." 2 In plain English, the medium 
must have a chance of filling up the gaps in his 
knowledge about the inquirer between his succeed- 
ing visits. The Artful Dodger is a 'prentice hand 
compared with the skilful medium. 

It is disconcerting to the inquirer to learn, on the 
authority of a veteran spiritualist, that " however 
innocent the medium on this plane may be, the 
inquirer is liable to be addressed by some mis- 

x Among some lower races the spirits act more directly. In Labrador 
they enter the body of the angekok and answer questions concerning 
their welfare and doings through his person. Canadian Department of 
Mines. Anthropological Series. Memoir 91, p. 137. By E. W. Hawkes 
(1916.) 

3 Pp. 110, 111. 



186 THE QUESTION 

chievous entity on the ' other side ' who falsely pre- 
tends to be the friend sought. This possibility is a 
serious embarrassment, and no one should rush to 
seances with the expectation of getting satisfactory 
results at once. Counsel with experienced friends 
should come first, and no communication can be 
finally reassuring till repeated conversations have 
convinced the inquirer that the right person on the 
other side is in touch with him or her." * 

In a review of Mr. Hereward Carrington's 
Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism, Mr. Podmore, 
who was master of the tricks of the trade, describes 
how the necessary knowledge is acquired before any 
one starts as a clairvoyant medium: 

" He spends some weeks in going as a book 
canvasser round the neighbourhood selected for his 
future field of work. He gossips with servants, 
reads tombstones and public registers, gets a 
glimpse when he can of the family Bible. In six 
months or a year he reaps his harvest. But he 
does not work single-handed. All the information 
thus laboriously gathered is poured into the com- 
mon stock and published for the use of the Guild 
in the Blue-book. When Mr. Verisopht, of Weiss- 
mihtwo, comes to consult the clairvoyant, the latter 
turns up the Blue-book as we might turn to the 
suburban directory, opens the page at Weissmihtwo, 
finds under V that Mrs. Verisopht, poor lady, lost 
a daughter ten years ago, learns her name, the 
disease from which she died, her favourite occu- 
pation in life, and so on. There is a demand for 
these messages from ' beyond,' and the commercial 

X A. P. Sinnett, Fortnightly Review, May, 1917, p. 867. 



PSYCHICAL MEDIUMS 187 

genius of the American nation has found a way 
to supply it. The Boston section of the Blue-book 
alone contains, we are told, seven thousand names." 1 

Dramatis personce at a seance: 1. The sitter or 
sitters — i.e. the inquirers. 2. The trance or clairvoy- 
ant medium. 3. The " control " — i.e. the spiritual 
agent through whom the departed spirit elects to 
send communications. 4. The departed spirit — i.e. 
the communicator. It suggests a quartet, as at 
whist, No. 2 holding all the tricks. If the sitter be 
excluded, there remains an unholy trinity — medium, 
control, and spirit — for " these three are one." 

As for the " control," the creation of this is an 
ingenious dodge, whereby the nonplussed medium 
can account to the sitter for any failure to get into, 
or continue in, touch with the " communicator," or 
for any confusion or errors in messages from him. 
On p. 55 a quotation from Raymond was given, 
wherein Sir Oliver Lodge explains what the control 
does, and in chapter thirteen of that book he at- 
tempts to explain what the control is. He says that 
it "is believed by some to be merely the subliminal 
self of the entranced person, brought to the surface, 
or liberated and dramatised into a sort of dream 
existence, for the time. By others it is supposed to 
be a healthy and manageable variety of the more or 
less pathological phenomenon known to physicians 
and psychiatrists as cases of dual or multiple per- 
sonality. By others again, it is believed to be in 
reality the separate intelligence which it claims 
to be." 2 

Sir Oliver inclines to this last-named theory. He 

1 Daily Chronicle, 7th September, 1908. 2 P. 357. 



188 THE QUESTION 

thinks that " the more responsible kind of control 
is a real person," because " sometimes, after gained 
experience, the communicator himself takes control 
and speaks or writes in the first person, not only as 
a matter of first-person reporting, which frequently 
occurs, but really in his own proper person, and with 
many of his old characteristics." x In what quag- 
mires of word-mongering the Spiritualists flounder 
has further proof in this quotation from Sir W. F. 
Barrett's On the Threshold of the Universe, wherein 
he flatly contradicts Sir Oliver's assumption that the 
communicator talks. 2 

" The difficulties of communicating are necessarily 
great, as we cannot suppose that a physical process 
or physical organs of speech and hearing are em- 
ployed by the communicators." 3 " My body's 
very similar to the one I had before," says Ray- 
mond, communicating through Feda." 4 

The proceedings at only a select number of — 
rubbers, shall we call them? — can here be described, 
for applicable to Spiritualism are the closing words 
of the Gospel according to St. John, " that even 
the world itself could not contain the books that 
should be [or have been] written " about it. And so 

1 P. 360. 

2 Spiritualists may be credited with ingenuity to prove that there 
are no fundamental differences between them. They remind us of the 
candidate for holy orders who was asked to explain the difference 
between the genealogies in St. Matthew and St. Luke. He replied that 
there were three reasons for that difference: 1. It was for the confirmation 
of our Christian faith where the genealogies agreed. 2. It was for 
the trial of our faith where they differed. 3. It was to call into play 
our exegetical ingenuity to reconcile them with each other. 

8 P. 243. 

4 Raymond, p. 195. This sitting Sir Oliver Lodge naively says has 
"some unveriflable matter" (p. 191). 



PSYCHICAL MEDIUMS 189 

crammed is that literature with monotonous, dreary 
stuff that after sampling it one feels that it would 
be less wearisome to read the whole of Cruden's 
Concordance^ whereby, at least, some pleasure 
would come in charging a well-equipped memory 
of the Scriptures to complete what is given in 
abstract or initial. 

Hence limitation of choice to some of the utter- 
ances of two of the most prominent mediums — 
Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Leonard and their several 
" controls." First, in order of time, to Mrs. Piper, 
whom, in playhouse terms, Sir Oliver Lodge " pre- 
sents " in this credential: 

" Mrs. Piper in the trance state is undoubtedly 
(I use the word in the strongest sense; I have 
absolutely no more doubt on the subject than I 
have of my friends' ordinary knowledge of me and 
other men) — Mrs. Piper's trance personality is 
undoubtedly aware of much to which she has no 
kind of ordinarily recognised clue, and of which in 
her ordinary state she knows nothing. But how 
does she get this knowledge? She herself, when in 
the trance state, asserts that she gets it by con- 
versing with the deceased friends and relatives of 
people present. And that this is a genuine opinion 
of hers, i.e. that the process feels like that to her 
unconscious or subconscious mind, the part of her 
which calls itself Phinuit, I am fully prepared to 
believe. But that does not carry us very far 
towards a knowledge of what the process ac- 
tually is." 1 

1 Proceedings, S.P.R. Vol. x., xxvi., p. 15. 



VII 

MRS. PIPER 

MRS. PIPER, when a young woman, suf- 
fered from some ailment, probably of 
nervous type, and was advised by a friend 
to consult a professional medium named Dr. Cocke. 
This was in 1884. Cocke's leading " control " was 
a French doctor (who does not know French) 
named Finne or Finnet, afterwards changed into 
Phinuit. On a second visit she herself became 
entranced, and thence onwards had a mixed com- 
pany of controls, among them an Indian girl named 
Chlorine (Sulphurine or Phosphorine would seem 
more appropriate) ; Mrs. Siddons, who recited a 
scene from Macbeth; Bach; Longfellow, who re- 
cited some of his own poetry; Commodore Vander- 
bilt, and, later on, Phinuit, who became her regular 
control until 1892, when he was temporarily ousted 
by George Pelham. Mrs. Piper was at her zenith 
from 1892 till 1896, when she underwent an oper- 
ation, with consequent decline of mediumistic 
power. In the winter of that year some of 
the controls of the late Stainton Moses — Im- 
perator, Rector and others — are in the succession. 
From 1885, the year of her initiation into the 
charmed circle of mediums, until his death in 1905, 
Dr. Richard Hodgson, a detector of Eusapia 
Palladino's and of Madame Blavatsky's trickeries, 

190 



MRS. PIPER 191 

acted as Mrs. Piper's business man. She paid a 
first visit to England in the winter of 1889-90, 
bringing the experience of five years' mediumship 
as equipment. She gave numerous sittings, which 
were arranged by the late F. W. H. Myers, Sir 
Oliver Lodge and Dr. Walter Leaf. In 1892 an 
intimate friend of Dr. Hodgson, whose pseudonym 
is "George Pelham " (his real name was Pennell), 
died suddenly in New York. He did not believe 
in a future life, but some time before his death he 
promised Hodgson that, if " still existing " after 
that event, he would do his utmost to get into 
communication with him. More will be said about 
him later on. By the time that Pelham' s 
death occurred, Mrs. Piper's " control " had passed 
from oral communications of the sort associated 
with the ordinary medium to written ones bearing 
more in detail upon the conditions under which the 
departed live in the spirit world. These last-named 
have had careful record in the Proceedings of the 
Society for Psychical Research and elsewhere, notes 
being taken of the happenings at each seance. 

In October, 1901, there came a startling report 
from America that Mrs. Piper had made a full con- 
fession, in which she denied that she had had com- 
munications from the departed when she was in the 
trance state. " I never," so the report in The New 
York Herald ran, " heard of anything being said by 
myself during a trance which might not have been 
latent in my own mind, or in the mind of the person 
in charge of the sitting, or in the mind of the 
person trying to get communication with some one 
in another state of existence, or of some companion 



102 THE QUESTION 

present with such a person, or in the mind of some 
absent person alive somewhere else in the world." 

But the white sheet of penitence was no sooner 
donned than doffed. A letter from Mr. J. G. 
Piddington, the Secretary of the American Society 
for Psychical Research, stating that Mrs. Piper 
withdrew her confession, was published in The Pilot 
of 23rd November, 1901. Dr. Hodgson explained 
that " Mrs. Piper had not discontinued her sittings 
and that the statement made by her represented 
simply a transient mood." " She has not," he told 
an interviewer, " discontinued her sittings for the 
Society." x That she returned to the status quo 
ante is evidenced by seances given by her at inter- 
vals reaching from her recantation to recent times. 

In Appendix Q to The Evidence for the Super- 
natural Dr. Tuckett discusses at length the pheno- 
mena of trance utterances and writings which have 
their fullest manifestation in Mrs. Piper, and sug- 
gests the explanation. In this skilfully performed 
task he has supplied labour-saving apparatus to 
others, and of this, as also of the facts set forth in 
the chapter on " Mrs. Piper's Mediumship " in Mr. 
Frank Podmore's Newer Spiritualism, grateful use 
is made in this section. 

In reading accounts of her seances, Dr. Tuckett 
bids the reader keep clear in his mind the several 
means by which she may have acquired knowledge 
that may appear to be derived from supernormal 
sources. These are muscle-reading, fishing, guess- 
ing, hints obtained in the sitting, knowledge sur- 
reptitiously obtained, knowledge acquired in the 

1 Westminster Gazette, 26th October, 1901. 



MRS. PIPER 193 

interval between sittings, and facts already within 
Mrs. Piper's knowledge. 

In the trance state, as described by a sitter, her 
face alters perceptibly, her eyes become fixed, the 
under lip trembles, markedly stertorous breathing 
ensues, then a stage of unconsciousness resembling 
quiet sleep. 

To this savage culture supplies a crowd of 
parallels, from which a few examples may be given. 
" The Fijian priest sits looking steadfastly at a 
whale's tooth ornament, amid dead silence. In a 
few minutes he trembles, slight twitchings of face 
and limbs come on, which increase to strong convul- 
sions, with swelling of the veins, murmurs and sobs. 
Now the god has entered ... he gives the divine 
answer." x Any morbid symptoms marked those in 
whom they were manifest as seers and mediums. In 
Uganda the medium, often a woman, smokes tobacco 
until the god comes upon her ; then she sits by a sacred 
fire, perspires and foams at the mouth when the 
oracle speaks, and the god leaves her. 2 Among the 
Patagonians, members of the tribe seized with fall- 
ing sickness or St. Vitus's dance were at once chosen 
as possessed by spirits who were believed to speak in 
or through them. 3 In the Karen district of Burmah 
the native " wee " or prophet works himself into the 
state in which he can see departed spirits, visit their 
distant home, and also recall them to the body. 4 

1 Primitive Culture. Vol. ii., p. 133. Brown's Melanesians and 
Polynesians, p. 224. 

2 The Baganda, p. 298. By Rev. John Roscoe. 

3 Dorman's Primitive Superstitions, p. 372. 

4 Mason: "Religion, etc., among the Karens," Jo. Asiatic Soc. Bengal. 
Vol. xxxiv., pt. 2. 



194 THE QUESTION 

These " wees " are nervous, excitable men of the 
type corresponding to the mediums among ourselves. 
Perhaps the most striking example is that told 
me by Miss Czaplicka, who during her intrepid 
travels through Siberia cleverly secured admission 
to a shamanistic seance. The shaman sat near a 
low fire in the tent, the sitters ranged round him. 
None must touch him nor move, lest the spirits 
should be disturbed. He beat the drum gently at 
the start, and then by degrees more loudly — the 
drumming is called " the language of the spirits," 
whereby they are summoned. He accompanies this 
with chants, sometimes with imitations of voices of 
men and animals, of winds and echoes (for the 
shaman is a skilful ventriloquist) ; he sings songs, 
and dances; then the drum is no longer beaten and 
the fire is put out. Gentle raps or taps of the spirits 
are heard; the shaman makes a rushing noise, as if 
escaping from the tent. After an interval of a 
quarter of an hour or longer he bumps on the 
ground to indicate his return. Sometimes he affects 
exhaustion and waits a while before telling the sitters 
what message he has brought from the spirits. In 
an article on the " Ostyaks of Siberia," in Hast- 
ings's Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Miss 
Czaplicka says: "The actual shamanistic perform- 
ances are very similar in type among all the natives 
of N. Siberia: the wandering of the shaman to the 
upper and lower worlds; his struggle or merely 
argument with the spirits upon whom the fate of 
the man for whom the ceremonies are being per- 
formed depends; the return of the shaman and the 
communication to the man of the result of his inter- 



MRS. PIPER 195 

view with the spirits; sometimes also the foretelling 
of the future of various people present at the 
ceremony." x 

All over Siberia, where there is a shaman there is 
also a drum; that and the rattle are indispensable 
to the magician's bag o' tricks in the phenomena 
of savage spiritualism everywhere. " The clinging 
together," says Sir E. B. Tylor, " of savage sorcery 
with these childish instruments is in full consistency 
with the theory that both belong to the infancy of 
mankind. With less truth to nature and history, the 
modern spirit-rapper, though his bringing-up the 
spirit of the dead by doing hocus-pocus under a table 
or in a dark room is so like the proceedings of the 
African mganga or the Red Indian medicine-man, 
has cast off the proper accompaniments of his trade 
and juggles with fiddles and accordions." 2 

During Mrs. Piper's first visit to this country she 
gave eighty-three sittings between November, 1889, 
and February, 1890; at all of these the company 
held one another's hands, those of the sitters next 
to Mrs. Piper being often pressed against her 
forehead, by which, adopting the tactics of the 
"thought-reader," she would know whether she 
was on the right scent. From these eighty-three 
the following is chosen as a type of the features 
of the whole. 

Notes by T. W. M. Lund, M.A., Chaplain of the 
School for the Blind, Liverpool, dated 26th April, 
1890: 

"With regard to my experiences of Mrs. Piper, 

1 Vol. ix., p. 580. 2 Early History of Mankind, p. 141. 



196 THE QUESTION 

I do not feel that I saw enough to form data for 
any satisfactory conclusion. What impressed me 
most was the way in which she seemed to feel for 
information, rarely telling me anything of import- 
ance right off the reel, but carefully fishing, and 
then following up a lead. It seemed to me when 
she got on a right track the nervous and uncontrol- 
lable movement of one's muscles gave her the signal 
that she was right and might steam ahead. 

" In some points she was entirely out of it — 
e.g. carriage accident — the dangerous dark man- 
Joseph and Harriet — and especially my style of 
preaching. Nothing could be a more ludicrous 
caricature than this last. 

" In others which I will name she made state- 
ments which singularly tallied with the truth — e.g. 
my son was ill, and my wife was going to see him. 
I found that at the very time given she left the 
house with a cloak on her arm, and brushed her 
dress in the way imitated by Mrs. Piper. 

" Still I am bound to say, within earshot of Mrs. 
Piper — before the sitting — I told Mrs. Lodge of 
my son's illness in Manchester, and my wife's pro- 
posed visit to him, and Mrs. Lodge addressed me 
by my name of Lund. 

" It is quite true that a carpet was recently burnt 
at our house; that my wife worries over her duties 
too much for comfort and health; and that I live 
in a room full of MSS. 

" But, without doubt, the feature of this sitting 
was the reference to my youngest sister, who died 
of diphtheria in my absence quite thirty years ago, 
and whose death was a heartaching sorrow for many 



MRS. PIPER 197 

years. Not only did she hit the name ' Maggie/ 
but even the pet name ' Margie,' which I had quite 
forgotten. However, the reason afterwards alleged 
for my absence at her death was quite wrong. 

" I accepted the trance condition on Dr. Lodge's 
authority; otherwise I should have felt bound to 
test it. 

" Altogether, there was such a mixture of the 
true and false, the absurd and rational, the vul- 
gar commonplace of the crafty fortune-teller with 
startling reality, that I have no theory to offer 
— merely the above facts. I should require much 
more evidence than I yet have, and with much more 
careful testing of it, to convince me: (1) that Mrs. 
Piper was unconscious [italics are mine]; (2) that 
there was any thought-reading beyond the clever 
guessing of a person trained in that sort of work; 
(3) that there was any ethereal communication with 
a spirit world. I did not like the sudden weakness 
experienced when I pressed my supposed sister for 
the reason of my absence at her death, and the delay 
wanted for giving a reply. 

" That the subject is full of interest, I admit, 
and I should like to pursue it; but I am far from 
convinced at present that we have evidence on which 
to build a new theory." 

The foregoing shows that Mrs. Piper (or 
Phinuit) made several erroneous statements, but 
also some which tallied with facts. Her successes 
will serve to throw light on her methods. 

Taking these in order, as they are mentioned in 
the above notes, we come, first, to the statement 



198 THE QUESTION 

that Mr. Lund's son was ill and that his wife had 
gone to see him. These two require no comment 
beyond a reminder that Mr. Lund had mentioned 
the illness and Mrs. Lund's prospective visit within 
Mrs. Piper's hearing! The carrying of the cloak 
and the brushing of the dress are not unusual in- 
cidents when a lady goes on a journey. 

The next success, the reference to the carpet 
burnt in Mr. Lund's house, dwindles in importance 
when we read the fuller report quoted by Dr. 
Tuckett (Proc. S.P.R. Vol. vi., p. 533). 

Phinuit. You had a fire a little time ago — 
no — a long time ago. Some little thing got 
burnt." 

It was said to be drapery, then tapestry, and only 
ultimately did Phinuit say that the thing burnt was 
a carpet. No very difficult feat! This leaves us 
with the supernormal communication: "You had 
a fire a little time ago — no — a long time ago." 
Even here Phinuit was feeling his way to successful 
guessing. " You had a fire ... a long time 
ago," whereas the carpet was recently burnt. Take 
the general statement: Mr. Lund, or the Lund 
family, had at some time a small fire when " some 
little thing got burnt." To what household does 
this at some time or another not apply? I had a 
little fire a little time ago, when a portion of my 
study carpet was burnt. Or take the statement in 
its amended form: "You had a little fire a long 
time ago. Some little thing got burnt." A dozen 
years ago a candle shade in my dining-room caught 
fire, scorching a foot or so of the tablecloth. 

The third success was Phinuit 's remark that Mrs. 



MRS. PIPER 199 

Lund worries over her duties too much for comfort 
or health. Even this hit was not delivered direct. 
" Your lady had a pain in her back; not very well; 
it made her a little depressed; tell her not to worry 
so, and don't be so devilish fussy." 

The chief feature of the sitting, Mr. Lund says, 
was the reference to and naming of his youngest 
sister and to his absence at her death. Dr. Tuckett 
gives an illuminating extract from the verbatim 
report: 

" She (Mrs. Piper) said I was away when my 
youngest sister passed out; not with her; a long 
way off. No chance to see her. She had blue eyes 
and brown hair — a very pretty girl. Pretty mouth 
and teeth; plenty of expression in them. She then 
tried to find the name and went through a long list * 
... at last said it had ' ag ' in the middle, and 
that's all she could find. She had changed a great 
deal. She was much younger and had been in the 
spirit a long time. 

" ' But it's your sister — Maggie — that's it — she 
says you are brother Tom — no, her name's Margie. 
Too bad you were not at home — it was one of the 
sorrows that followed Tom all his life. (Correct.) 
He'll never forget it.' 

1 A not uncommon dodge. Andrew Lang says that " when ' pos- 
sessed,' Mrs. Piper would cheat when she could — that is to say, she 
would make guesses, try to worm information out of her sitter, describe 
a friend of his, alive or dead, as ' Ed.,' who may be Edgar, Edmund, 
Edward, Edith or anybody. She would shuffle and repeat what she 
had picked up in a former sitting with the same person, and the vast 
majority of her answers started from vague references to probable 
facts (as that an elderly man is an orphan) and so worked on to more 
precise statements." Making of Religion, p. 150. 



200 THE QUESTION 

"I said: 'Ask how it was I wasn't there.' 
"She said: ' I'm getting weak now — au revoirS" 

Dr. Tuckett points out how she came to know 
Mr. Lund's Christian name. 

" Mrs. Piper. Who is it you call Lira? The 
lady's sister (unknown) Lorina, Eleanor, Caterina, 
a sister, two names — one's Emma, a sister con- 
nected with you through marriage? Do you know 
Thomas? ('I'm Thomas,' I replied.) He'll 
know me — Thomas Lon — Lund — Tom Lund. 
That's your sister that's saying it." 

It will be remembered that within Mrs. Piper's' 
hearing Mrs. Lodge addressed Mr. Lund by his 
name. 1 

With his never-failing sprightliness Andrew 
Lang gave a bogus example of the angling for 
facts by which the astute mediums land their fish. 
He borrows a dialogue from Moliere's Monsieur de 
Pourceaugnac, substituting Mrs. Piper and Phinuit 
for Eraste, and Mr. Nehemiah K. Chew for M. de 
Pourceaugnac. The ingenious Mr. Chew thinks 
that Phinuit has revealed to him what in fact he 
has told the more astute Phinuit. 

" Mrs. Piper — i.e. Phinuit. What do you call 
that restaurant at Limoges where they cook so 
well? 

Nehemiah K. Chew. Petit Jean's. 

P. and P. Of course, that's it. We often used 
to go there. And the place where we used to walk? 

N. K. C. The cemetery of Les Arenes. 

P. and P. Of course. Now tell me about your 

1 Tuckett, pp. 330, 333. 



MRS. PIPER 201 

people. How is M . . . how is your . . . oh, 
the good fellow, don't you know? 

N. K. C. My brother the consul? 

P. and P. Yes. 

N. K. C. He could not be better. 

P. and P. And that jolly laughing fellow, 
your . . . 

N. K. C. My cousin, the police magistrate? 

P. and P. That's the man. 

N. K. C. Gay as ever. 

P. and P. And your uncle? 

N. K. C. I have no uncle. 

P. and P. You had one when I knew you. 

N. K. C. Only an aunt. 

P. and P. Bless me, it was aunt I meant to say. 

N. K. C. (aside). He knows every one of my 
relations." * 

Three brief judgments on sittings purporting to 
convey communications from, or relating to, the 
dead have a high value: one from the eminent 
psychologist, the late William James, who inclined 
to accept spiritual explanations of the phenomena; 
the second from Dr. Walter Leaf, whom the late 
Andrew Lang called "our effective ally"; and 
the third from Professor MacAlister, an eminent 
anatomist. 

Professor James thus comments on a sitting at 
which a message purporting to come from Edward 
Gurney, who died in 1888, was delivered by Mrs. 
Piper. 

" It was bad enough, and I confess that the 

1 Longmans' Magazine, December, 1895, p. 211. 



202 THE QUESTION 

human being in me was stronger than the man of 
science, that I was too disgusted with Phinuit's 
tiresome twaddle even to note it down. When later 
the phenomenon developed into pretended direct 
speech from Gurney himself, I regretted this, for 
a completer record would have been useful. I can 
now merely say that neither then nor at any other 
time was there, to my mind, the slightest inner veri- 
similitude in the impersonation." * 

" Several instructive instances," remarks Dr. 
Leaf, " point directly against any knowledge de- 
rived from the spirits of the dead. For instance, 
in Mrs. H. Leaf's first sitting a question was put 
about ' Harry,' whose messages Phinuit purported 
to be giving. ' Did he leave a wife ? ' No answer 
was given to this at the time, but in accordance 
with Phinuit's frequent practice the supposed hint 
was stored up for future use, and at Mrs. H. Leaf's 
next sitting she was told, ' Harry sends his love to 
his wife ' : now, as a matter of fact, Harry never 
was married." 2 

" On the whole, then, the effect which a careful 
study of all the reports of the English sittings has 
left on my mind is this: that Dr. Phinuit is only 
a name for Mrs. Piper's secondary personality." 3 
Dr. Leaf makes frequent references to " equally 
unsatisfactory sittings, leading to equally justifiable 
incredulity on the part of the sitter." 

" Mrs. Piper," says Professor MacAlister, " is 
quite wide awake enough all through to profit by 
suggestions. I let her see a blotch of ink on my 

1 Proceedings, S.P.R. Vol. vi., p. 656. *Tuckett, p. 334. 

8 Tuckett, p. 328. 



MRS. PIPER 203 

finger and she said that I was a writer. Except 
the guess about my sister Helen, who is alive, there 
was not a single guess which was nearly right. Mrs. 
Piper is not anaesthetic during the so-called trance, 
and if you ask my private opinion, it is that the 
whole thing is an imposture, and a poor one." 1 

Neither does it count for righteousness to Mrs. 
Piper, that Professor Shaler, of Harvard, as the 
result of close observations at a sitting given to his 
wife, thus concludes a letter to Professor William 
James: "I have given you a mixture of observa- 
tions and criticisms: let me say that I have no firm 
mind in the matter. I am curiously and yet abso- 
lutely uninterested in it for the reason that I don't 
see how I can exclude the hypothesis of fraud, and 
until that can be excluded no advance can be 
made." 2 

Mrs. Piper gave the late Sir George H. Darwin 
two sittings on the 27th and 29th November, 1889, 
respectively. He was introduced as " Mr. Smith " 
— a pseudonym generally given to her sitters. She 
talked of his ailments. " A keen medical diagnosis," 
he says, " but not more than a doctor might venture 
to say from inspection of me. ... I was said to 
study or think much; this is a safe conjecture in 
a university town. The second half of the sitting 
was devoted to my friends. Not a single name or 
person was given correctly, although perhaps nine 
or ten were named." Summarising both sittings, 
Sir George adds: "Almost every statement made 
could have been given if the medium could have dis- 

1 Proceedings S.P.R. Vol. vi. s p. 605. 
8 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 335. 



204 THE QUESTION 

covered my name and a few fragments of Cambridge 
talk between the first sitting and the second. I 
remain wholly unconvinced either of any remark- 
able powers or of thought transference." 1 Now 
the joke, subsequently explained by Sir George in 
a letter to Dr. Tuckett, published by him in The 
Literary Guide, March, 1917, 2 is as follows: — 

" The account given to me by Sir George Darwin, 
after describing how he went to Myers' house and, 
under the pseudonym of ' Smith,' had his first sitting 
with Mrs. Piper, runs thus: 

" ' Myers sat at some distance from us at a window 
with a note-book. At the end of the seance, as I 
went out with him, I noticed his note-book open on 
the table, with DARWIN written large at the head 
of the page. Mrs. Piper was apparently in a trance 
at the other end of the room, and no one was in the 
room with her for some two or three minutes, while 
Myers, Mrs. Myers and I were on the stairs. I 
drew Myers' attention to the want of care, and he 
remarked that Mrs. Piper could not have seen the 
book. Mrs. Myers said my real name in a clear 
voice on the stairs, with the door of the seance room 
wide open. At the second interview, near the be- 
ginning, Mrs. Piper said: " D-A-R-W-I-N, what a 
strange name.'* 

It is, as Dr. Tuckett says, a good example of 
the critical care with which the late Frederic Myers, 
perhaps the most noted member of the S.P.R., con- 
ducted psychical research. 

At a sitting with Sir Oliver Lodge on the 2nd 

1 Tuckett, p. 365. 2 P. 43. 



MRS. PIPER 205 

February, 1890, several more or less correct state- 
ments were made about a George Wilson known to 
Sir Oliver. It was said that at one time George 
Wilson had intended to be a doctor. This co- 
incided with an idea that Sir Oliver had got hold 
of, so that he notes that, at the time, he thought it 
correct. Actually, as he admits afterwards, it had 
been Wilson's intention to be a farmer. Thus, he 
says, " a great deal of this obviously looks like 
thought transference." At the same sitting state- 
ments were made about Wilson's father, a man 
wholly unknown to Sir Oliver. Concerning this 
sitting, Mr. Wilson wrote to him : " The statements 
made by the medium fall into two classes: 

" (i) Those which relate to matters known to you. 

" (ii) Those which you could not know — as, for 
example, either my present circumstances or my 
past life. 

" What is said under (i) is as you would see more 
or less correct. What is said under (ii) is entirely 
incorrect. . . . And, in general, the kind of man 
represented is the antipodes of the dignified, precise 
character of my father." 

The death of "George Pelham" in 1892— two 
years after Mrs. Piper's return to America — opened 
a new chapter in her history. He had one sitting 
with her some four years before his death, when his 
name was withheld, and his death seems to have 
occurred without her knowledge. Soon afterwards, 
when she gave a seance to one of his friends (John 
Hart, an assumed name), Phinuit said: "There is 
another George who wants to speak to you — how 
many Georges are there about you, anyway? " 



206 THE QUESTION 

"Pelham," assuming it was he who was communi- 
cating through Phinuit, gave his full name correctly, 
also that of the sitter and of a group of intimate 
friends. He recognised as his own a stud which the 
sitter was wearing. " That's mine ; father gave 
you that. [No.] Well, then, father and mother 
together. Mother took them. Gave them to 
father, and father gave them to you." This was 
correct: the stepmother had taken them from the 
dead body. " I saw her brush my clothes and put 
them away." This was incorrect; the man who 
valeted George did that. " Pelham " sent a 
message to two friends, James and Mary Howard, 
and to their daughter Katharine. At a subsequent 
seance given to Mr. Howard he was greeted by 
" Pelham " familiarly, and with references to 
people and incidents for the correctness of which 
Mr. Howard vouched. Desiring further proof, 
another sitting was given him. " There, as Hodg- 
son, who acted as note-taker, described the scene, 
whilst Mrs. Piper's body lay inert and apparently 
lifeless, her right hand impatiently and fiercely wrote 
in answer to Mr. Howard's request. Several state- 
ments were read to me and assented to by Mr. 
Howard ; then was written * private ' and the hand 
gently pushed away. I retired to the other side of 
the room, and Mr. Howard took my place close to 
the hand where he could read the writing. He did 
not, of course, read it aloud, and it was too private 
for my perusal. The hand, as it reached the end of 
each sheet, tore it off from the block book, thrust 
it wildly at Mr. Howard and then continued writing. 
The circumstances narrated, Mr. Howard informed 



MRS. PIPER 207 

me, contained precisely the kind of test for which 
he asked, and he said that he was ' perfectly satis- 
fied, perfectly.' After this incident there was some 
further conversation, with references to the past that 
seemed specially natural as coming from G. P." x 
Prima facie, this looks a strong case, standing out 
in bold relief against the mass of irrelevant stuff that 
G. P. poured forth, which Dr. Hodgson gives in 
tedious unabridgment. Both Mrs. Piper and G. P. 
lived in Boston, and in the intimacy between him 
and Hodgson there would be subjects of talk, the 
more so as G. P. met his death through a tragic 
accident. Moreover, there was the Boston section 
of the Blue-book already referred to, 2 which, pre- 
sumably, was not unknown to so acute a woman 
as Mrs. Piper. When G. P. was asked to give 
names specially asked for, details of the Boston 
society which he and others had formed, he ("re- 
sembling all the other Piper personalities," as 
Mr. Podmore says 3 ) stumbled or blundered. At 
later sittings he had more to tell, and tells it 
correctly. Bearing on this, Dr. Tuckett says that 
in the sixth volume of the Proceedings of the Society 
for Psychical Research he finds " that on at least 
fourteen occasions Mrs. Piper gave information at 
a second or subsequent sitting which she had not 
succeeded in giving at the first sitting." 4 Every 
year " Mrs. Piper has been getting a greater grasp 
of the problem how to supply the type of evidence 
which her sitters want her to furnish in support of 
the ' spiritualist hypothesis,' both by means of an 

1 The Newer Spiritualism, p. 174. 2 Ante, p. 187. 

8 Ibid., p. 181. * Evidence for the Supernatural, p. 342. 



208 THE QUESTION 

increasing acquaintance with psychic literature and 
with those engaged in psychic research, and also by 
means of hints and suggestions made by sitters to 
her — that is, to her ' control ' in the trance state." 1 

Concerning " G. P.," Andrew Lang was sceptical. 
He says that " when alive, he was a scholar and 
metaphysician; when dead he had forgotten his 
Greek and in philosophy would have been plucked. 
He did not find any difficulty in mere ordinary 
conversation. But ask him for any proof of his 
identity and he was, usually, incoherent or wholly 
mistaken. His prophecies would have ruined any 
sporting prophet. His excuses for his blunders bor- 
dered on the mendacious, though fluent enough." 2 

In a volume entitled The Quest for Dean Bridg- 
man Conner, published in 19 16, 3 a story of putting 
the spirit " on inquiry " is told. In February, 1895, 
a young electrician bearing that name, living in 
Mexico, died of typhoid fever and was buried in 
the American cemetery. The death was notified to 
his parents in Burlington, Vermont, and, following 
on this, his father had a dream " in which the son 
appeared and said he was not dead, but was alive 
and held captive in Mexico." The misrule in that 
country warranted a suspicion that the son had 
been kidnapped and was in the hands of brigands. 
The body was exhumed and there was some doubt 
as to its identity. The publicity given to the affair 
caused Dr. Hodgson to consult Mrs. Piper. She 
gave several seances, the result of which was to learn 

1 Evidence for the Supernatural, p. 323. 

3 The Pilot, 23rd November, 1901. 

8 By Anthony T. Philpott. (Heinemann.) 



MRS. PIPER 209 

from the " controls " that Dean Bridgman Conner 
was in a lunatic asylum kept by one Dr. Cintz. 
They minutely described the place and its situation 
near the city of Puebla. 

Mr. Philpott, who tells the story, was on the staff 
of The Boston Globe. He had once tracked a miss- 
ing man to his lair; he believed in Mrs. Piper, hence 
he was sent in search of Conner. But he could find 
no lunatic asylum, no Dr. Cintz, and no news of 
Conner, so he travelled to Mexico, went straightway 
to the hospital, and learned that both the doctor 
and the nurse who attended Conner had left. Her 
name was Smith, which did not make search easier, 
but he was afterwards told that she had married a 
one-armed man who owned a hacienda at Tuxpan. 
Thither he went, and interviewed the nurse, who 
confirmed the fact that Conner had died of fever 
in the hospital. 

On Mr. Philpott's return to Boston, Dr. Hodgson 
would not believe him, and said that "if he had the 
means he would go to Mexico and find Conner — 
alive — and bring him back to his father and mother." 
On this the proprietor of The Boston Globe offered 
to pay his expenses and advertised the offer, but 
Dr. Hodgson did not go to Mexico. 

Mr. J. A. Hill's naive comment is that " the 
Conner case, therefore, with all its mistakes, does 
not invalidate the true things that constitute good 
evidence for survival in other parts of Mrs. Piper's 
experience." * 

It's the old, old story. Directly any test on 
which a practical issue hangs is applied, the bladder 

1 Psychical Investigations, p. 208. 



210 THE QUESTION 

collapses, but only, as the whole history of spiritual- 
ism shows, to be blown again. 1 

Dr. Hodgson's attitude is explicable. In his 
report on Mrs. Piper, published in 1898, he said: 
" I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the 
chief ' communicators ' to whom I have referred are 
veritably the personalities that they claim to be, 
that they have survived the change we call death, 
and that they have directly communicated with us, 
whom we call living, through Mrs. Piper's entranced 
organism." He died suddenly, and only eight days 
passed before his " control " came into touch (that 
is, if it had ever left it) with Mrs. Piper. Obviously 
her many years of close intimacy with him and re- 
sulting knowledge of him make the communications 
and information acquired from him, which he pur- 
ports to send, of little or no evidential value. There 
is no need to give examples. In his Report on the 
Piper-Hodgson control in the twenty-third volume 
of the Proceedings of the S. P. R., June, 1909, 

1 A legal friend, Mr. E. S. P. Haynes, recently asked Sir Oliver 
Lodge (whom he knew slightly) to introduce him to a high-class medium 
through whom he could be put into communication with his deceased 
father and another solicitor, who also had " passed over." The reason 
was that in the absence of documents to throw light on transactions 
which were within the knowledge of the two, a service would be ren- 
dered by getting at the facts through them. The request, therefore, 
was made in all seriousness, and by a man who keeps an open mind 
on the genuineness of psychical research. Sir Oliver referred my 
friend to the editor of Light, the official organ of Spiritualism, who 
replied in dexterous terms that " it is unwise to depend on the judg- 
ment of the inhabitants of another sphere of existence regarding mat- 
ters solely relating to this and which we earth-dwellers ought to settle 
for ourselves." Moreover, that " the power of communication is at 
present so very improperly developed that it would be most unsafe 
to frame one's course of action on the counsel we might mistakenly 
suppose they wished to give us." 



MRS. PIPER 211 

Professor William James says that " Hodgson had 
often, during his lifetime, laughingly said that if he 
ever passed over and Mrs. Piper was still officiating 
here below, he would control her better than she had 
ever yet been controlled in her trances, because he 
was so thoroughly familiar with the difficulties and 
conditions on this side." Here is Professor James's 
verdict: the verdict of a psychologist who had Mrs. 
Piper under close observation for a quarter of a 
century, and who admitted a bias towards the 
spiritualistic hypothesis : 

" The contents of the Hodgson material is no 
more veridical than is a lot of earlier Piper material, 
especially in the days of the old Phinuit control. 
And it is, as I began by saying, vastly more leaky 
and susceptible of naturalistic explanation than is 
any body of Piper material recorded before." 

To sum up the impressions resulting from study 
of the records of Mrs. Piper's deliverances in her 
" trance states," so far as these are of the genuine 
clairvoyant type, charges of deliberate fraud may 
not be admissible. Here we are on the confines of 
the abnormal: much, long hidden in the recesses 
of subconsciousness, may then reappear in fantastic 
shapes, such as visit us in dreams. Psychology takes 
count of this and other abnormalities and explains 
them. It is only where the supernormal is assumed 
as cause that the debateable comes in. Are Mrs. 
Piper's deliverances of a nature which can be ac- 
counted for only as parts of what Sir Conan Doyle 
calls "a new revelation"? Is she among the privi- 
leged few to whom discarnate spirits tell the secrets 
of the Eternal? If so, the cryptic is marvellously 



212 THE QUESTION 

covered by the commonplace. Certainly, as the 
Conner case exemplifies, she failed to discover a 
secret of the temporal. 

Mr. Podmore, whose prolonged study and analysis 
of psychical phenomena constituted him the chief 
authority on their validity, says that " Mrs. Piper's 
trance utterances and writings are admitted both by 
believers in spiritualism and by telepathists to form 
almost the most important part of the evidence on 
which they rely to support their respective hy- 
potheses." His conclusion is that they " do not 
obviously call for any supernormal explanation." 
The instances which seem to point to some external 
source of inspiration are neither sufficiently numer- 
ous nor sufficiently free from ambiguity to warrant 
any such inference. " The information given by 
her trance personality is very generally incomplete, 
or of uncertain meaning, and needs expert interpre- 
tation. I cannot point to a single instance in which 
a precise and unambiguous piece of information has 
been furnished of a kind which could not have pro- 
ceeded from the medium's own mind working upon 
the materials provided and the hints let drop by the 
sitters." 1 "She is vague about dates: she prefers 
to give Christian names rather than surnames; and 
of Christian names the commoner rather than the 
more out-of-the-way: she rarely attempts to give 
descriptions of houses or places, and her attempts 
in this direction are commonly failures. In other 
words, she is weakest precisely where the pseudo- 
medium is most successful. Her real strength lies 
in describing the diseases [Phinuit often played the 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., pp. 344, 345. 



MRS. PIPER 213 

role of a medical adviser], personal idiosyncrasies, 
thoughts, feelings and character of the sitter and 
his friends: their loves, hates, quarrels, sympathies, 
and mutual relationships in general: trivial but signi- 
ficant incidents in their past histories and the like." x 
As my wife remarks, while men have more ability 
and persistence in hunting out information, women 
are quicker to interpret significances in voice, manner 
and appearance; they read character more easily. 
Emotions betray themselves more readily to them 
than to men. 

The late Andrew Lang, who confessed that he had 
" the will to believe in an unusual degree," 2 said 
that, for him, " the interest of Mrs. Piper is purely 
anthropological. She exhibits a survival or re- 
crudescence of savage phenomena, real or feigned, 
of convulsion and of sensory personality, and enter- 
tains a survival of the animistic explanation." He 
does " not impeach her normal character. But 
' secondary personalities ' have often more of Mr. 
Hyde than of Dr. Jekyll in their composition." 3 

Psychical Researchers will agree that the reports 
of spirits and their doings among barbaric races, 
made by travellers and missionaries, have evidential 
value, although perhaps of a low grade. The 
" controls," to whose communications believers in 
the occult give ear and record, have no limitations 
as to clime, race, sex or age; and those to whom 
they bring reassuring messages that the discarnate 

1 Modem Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 341. 

3 Discussing the matter with him one afternoon at the Savile Club, 
he said, somewhat in jest, but more in earnest: "I don't believe, but 
I tremble." 

8 The Making of Religion, p. 150. 



214 THE QUESTION 

spirit "being dead, yet speaketh," must desire 
every bereaved fellow-creature to enjoy the like 
consolation. They must also desire to increase the 
body of data on which their conclusions rest; hence, 
they should establish branches of their Society wher- 
ever the materials which it was founded to collect 
and compare exist. 



VIII 

MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 

RAYMOND LODGE, youngest son of Sir 
Oliver and Lady Lodge, was killed by 
shrapnel in the attack on Hooge Hill in 
Flanders on the 14th September, 1915. The news 
of his death reached his family three days later. 
In August, 1914, a Mrs. Kennedy wrote to Sir Oliver 
Lodge (who was then in Australia) informing him 
that she had recently lost a son named Paul, from 
whom she had daily received communications through 
automatic writing, and, because of Sir Oliver's " in- 
vestigations into spirit life," asking his help to remove 
her scepticism about the genuineness of her power as 
an automatist. Sir Oliver, on his return, took Mrs. 
Kennedy " anonymously and unexpectedly " to an 
American " direct voice " medium, Mrs. Wriedt, 
who performed the easy task of removing her doubts. 
Other mediums contributed to that happy issue — 
among these Mr. Vout Peters and Mrs. Osborne 
Leonard. Mrs. Kennedy was on intimate terms 
with both, and introduced Sir Oliver and Lady 
Lodge to them, not disclosing their names, so it is 
said. They nursed the idea that they were un- 
known to these mediums! On seeing the announce- 
ment of the death of Raymond Lodge, Mrs. Ken- 
nedy spoke to her departed son, " and asked him to 

m 



216 THE QUESTION 

help; she also asked for a special sitting with Mrs. 
Leonard for the same purpose, though without say- 
ing why." x On the 18th September her own hand 
automatically wrote as from Paul: " I am here. 
... I have seen that boy, Sir Oliver's son; he's 
better and has had a splendid rest, tell his people." 
Four days later, he sends another message: " I shall 
bring Raymond to his father when he comes to see 
you." At her request Mrs. Leonard arranged to 
give a sitting on the 25th following to Lady Lodge, 
and to a French lady who had lost both her sons. 
The names of the sitters were withheld. The three 
ladies sat round a table, which tilted in the usual 
responsive way as each letter of the alphabet was 
spoken by the medium, stopping at the moment 
when the right letter was reached. At this seance 
the most interesting answer that purported to come 
from Raymond was : " Tell father I have met some 
friend of his." "Any name?" "Yes, Myers." 
The rest of the talk was commonplace. Two days 
afterwards Sir Oliver had his first sitting with Mrs. 
Leonard. He went, he tells us, " as a complete 
stranger," only saying that he was a friend of Mrs. 
Kennedy. He guilelessly adds: "I lay no stress 
on my anonymity, however," and he writes as if it 
were possible for so well-known a man, whose com- 
manding figure and benevolent face is so familiar, 
whose photograph is in the shop windows, and whose 
reputation as a spiritualist is world-wide, to preserve 
that anonymity. Sancta simplicitas! Why, di- 
rectly the news of Raymond Lodge's death was 
spread abroad, every medium in the country was on 

1 Raymond, p. 119. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 217 

the alert, hoping to be the favoured chosen one of 
a visit from his parents. And at the seance given 
by Mrs. Leonard to Lady Lodge the Frenchwoman 
let slip her ladyship's name! Sir Oliver was in- 
formed by Mrs. Leonard that her " guide " or " con- 
trol " was a young Indian girl named Feda, 1 who 
calls Raymond " Zaymond," he in return calling her 
" Illustrious One ": Paul Kennedy calls her " Imp." 
Mr. Vout Peters has three controls : " Moonstone," 
who in this life was a " Yogi " and who was a 
hundred years old when he crossed to the Beyond, 
and who passes on a message from W. T. Stead; 
" Red-feather," who talks broken English ; and 
" Biddy," an old Irish washerwoman, who lived next 
a church. Addressing Mrs. Kennedy, Biddy said: 
" You don't realise that the world is governed by 
chains and that you are one of the links; one of my 
chains is to help mothers." She was clearly not in 
sympathy with the old charwoman whose one desire 
on arriving in the Beyond was 

" To sit on the banks of that beautiful river, 
And never do nothing for ever and ever." 

We have the testimony of the American, Madame 
Brockway — " psychist," as she describes herself — 
who was recently fined fifty pounds and thirty 
guineas costs and recommended for expulsion, that 
Peters is " London's Premier Psychic." 

Prior to any seances, early in September, Sir 
Oliver Lodge received from Mrs. Piper the original 

1 We are not told on what principle the spirits choose their " con- 
trols." But they favour little Indian girls. Miss Wood had Pocha, 
Mrs. Piper has Chlorine, and now comes Feda. 



218 THE QUESTION 

script of a message received on the 8th August from 
Myers to her via Richard Hodgson as control, a 
Miss Robbins being present. It ran as follows: — 



" Richard Hodgson. Now, Lodge, while we are 
not here as of old, i.e. not quite, we are here enough 
to take and give messages. Myers says you 
take the part of the poet and he will act as 
Faunus. 

Miss Robbins. Faunus? 

Richakd Hodgson. Yes, Myers. Protect. He 
will understand. What have you to say, Lodge? 
Good work. Ask Verrall, she will also understand. 
Arthur says so. [This means Dr. Arthur W. 
Verrall, deceased. — O. J. L.] 

Miss Robbins. Do you mean Arthur Tenny- 
son? [She confused Alfred Tennyson with 
Verrall.] 

Richaed Hodgson. No. Myers knows." 

This implies that Myers had premonition of 
Raymond's death six weeks before it hap- 
pened. 

Thereupon Sir Oliver wrote to Mrs. Verrall (since 
deceased), who knew her Horace, asking: " Does the 
Poet and Faunus mean anything to you? Did one 
protect the other? " Set on the quest, and, perhaps, 
carrying in her memory certain Horatian allusions 
in Mr. Myers's poem on " Immortality " printed in 
his posthumous Fragments of Prose and Poetry, she 
replied that " the reference is to Horace's account of 
his narrow escape from death, from a falling tree, 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 219 

which he ascribes to the intervention of Faunus " x 
(a vegetation god and guardian of poets). Sir 
Oliver's comment is that a blow upon him was im- 
pending, from which Myers would protect him, and 
that he himself had a dim recollection of some im- 
pending catastrophe, " perhaps of a financial rather 
than of a personal kind." 2 He makes much to turn 
on that construing of levasset as meaning that 
Faunus weakened or checked the blow, and suggests 
that the message from Myers meant that " he had 
redeemed his ' Faunus ' promise and had lightened 
the blow by looking after and helping Raymond on 
the other side." Horace says that Faunus averted 
the death-stroke from him, but Raymond was killed! 
Cadit qucestio. However, Sir Oliver, clutching at 
any explanation of the Faunus message that points 
to Myers's intervention to " protect," finds verifica- 
tion when " Feda " tells him that she sees a dark 
cross falling on Sir Oliver, and then turning its 
bright side on him. 3 Mrs. Piper and Sir Oliver are 
close friends, and her thoughts may well have wan- 
dered towards him and the son to whom death might 
come at any moment. Mrs. Piper's antecedents 

* Odea, II, xvii., 27-30. 

"Me truncus illapsus cerebro 
Sustulerat, nisi Faunus ictum 
Dextra levasset, Mercurialium 
Custos virorum." 

" Me the curst trunk that smote my skull 
Had slain, but Faunus, strong to shield 
The friend of Mercury, check'd the blow 
In mid descent." 

(Conington's trans.) 
2 An explanation of this may possibly be found in a financial article 
in Truth of 17th January, 1917. 
8 Raymond, p. 92. 



220 THE QUESTION 

were humble; presumably, she is not a classical 
scholar, but the utterance of scraps of knowledge in 
foreign tongues which have passed unheeded into 
subconsciousness is not unusual. During her first 
visit to England she frequently met Myers, and the 
lines from Horace may have been quoted by him 
in conversation. When she came here in 1906 to 
throw light, if possible, on the problem of cross- 
correspondence, there were many references both 
to Horace and to Myers's poems in her presence. 1 
She is one of several automatists who profess to 
have received communications from Myers. He 
cannot be said to have passed to his rest: dying 
in January, 1901, in less than a month after that 
he was sending messages through the control Nelly, 
a baby daughter of a trance medium named Mrs. 
Thompson. In the following May he complained: 
" They keep on calling me. Do appeal to them not 
to break me up so. When Mr. Myers wants to go 
to sleep and be quiet, mother will not let him. She 
will call him. You must tell her so." 

Here it may be opportune to insert copy of a 
letter from Mrs. Myers which appeared in The 
Morning Post of the 24th October, 1908: 



Spiritualistic Messages 

(To the Editor of The Morning Post) 

Sir, — For some time papers and periodicals have 
been drawing the attention of the public to various 

1 The Newer Spiritualism, p. 210, and cf. Ibid., p. 261. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 221 

spiritualistic messages purporting to come from my 
husband, the late F. W. H. Myers. My son and I 
wish to state, in reply to many inquiries we have 
received, that after a very careful study of all the 
messages we have found nothing which we can con- 
sider of the smallest evidential value. Yours, etc., 

Eveleen Myers. 

2 Richmond Terrace,, Whitehall., 
23rd October. 



Surely wife and children would be the first to 
have messages from their beloved one. Added to 
this there is the well-known, damning fact that can- 
not be too widely known, how Myers left behind 
him, in the care of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search, a sealed letter written in 1891, the contents 
of which Mrs. Verrall as medium believed that she 
could reveal. When the seal was broken on the 
13th December, 1904, three years after his death, 
there was found to be no resemblance between the 
contents of the letter and Mrs. Verrall's automatic 
script which purported to contain a communica- 
tion from the discarnate Myers. Sir Oliver sug- 
gested that Myers may have forgotten what he had 
written in the envelope : as if he could have forgotten 
that which, at his own initiative, was to be the crucial 
test of the survival of his personality! A second test 
case is that of the soi-disant Hannah Wild, who 
on several occasions dictated what professed to be 
the contents of a sealed letter written by the real 
Hannah Wild before her death, for the express 



222 THE QUESTION 

purpose of the test; and all these versions were 
entirely wide of the mark. 1 

In the afternoon of the same day, 27th September, 
1915, Lady Lodge, nursing the delusion that she 
was " a complete stranger," had her first sitting 
with " the well-known London medium," Mr. Vout 
Peters, at Mrs. Kennedy's house. "When Mr. 
Peters goes into a trance, his personality is sup- 
posed to change to that of another man, who, we 
understand, is ' Moonstone,' much as Mrs. Piper was 
controlled by apparent personalities calling them- 
selves ' Phinuit,' ' Rector,' and others. When Mr. 
Peters does not go into a trance he has some clair- 
voyant faculty of his own." 2 The notes of this 
" important sitting," as Sir Oliver calls it, are given 
in full, and except in one matter, which he regards 
as evidential, the talk is dreary, unilluminating 
commonplace. 

" ' You have,' says ' Moonstone,' ' several portraits 
of this boy. Two where he is alone, and one where 
he is in a group of other men. He is particular 
that I should tell you of this. In one you see his 
walking-stick.' ( ' Moonstone ' here put an imagin- 
ary stick under his arm.) " 3 The family, of course, 
had portraits of Raymond, but not as one of a 
group: here Moonstone blundered. However, in 
the following November a Mrs. Cheves wrote to 
Lady Lodge offering to send her a photograph of 
a group of officers taken abroad in the previous 
August, in which Raymond Lodge appears. Before 

1 Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 306. Quoted from Proc. S.P.B. 
Vol. viii., pp. 10-15. 
* Raymond, p. 128. The italics, emphasising the vagueness, are mine. 
8 Raymond, p. 133. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 223 

it reached him, Sir Oliver had a sitting with Mrs. 
Leonard (on the 3rd December), when he put a 
number of " leading " questions about the photo- 
graph to Feda, one of these being: "Did he have 
a stick? " 

Feda. " He doesn't remember that. He remem- 
bers that somebody wanted to lean on him, but he 
is not sure if he was taken with some one leaning 
on him. But some one wanted to lean on him he 
remembers." 

The photograph arrived on the 7th December. In 
front of a wooden shed are seen twenty-four soldiers 
in three rows; Raymond is one of five in the front; 
his stick or cane lies across his feet — every officer 
carries his cane — one of the group in the second row 
appears to have his hand on Raymond's shoulder. 
Three photographs had been taken; each is repro- 
duced in Raymond: in all of them, as might be 
expected in a group photograph, the officers are 
more or less leaning on one another. 

In the other answers " Feda " fumbles along, 
trusting to the next question to help her to a clue. 
She talks of the group as " a mixed lot " ; they could 
not well be otherwise; she blunders over the names 
of officers who are not in it, and so forth. But no 
discrepancies can disturb Sir Oliver's convictions; 
in " the evidential value of the whole communica- 
tion " he sees " something of the nature of cross- 
correspondence of a simple kind in the fact that a 
reference to the photograph was made through one 
medium and a description given, in answer to a 
question [the italics are mine], through an indepen- 
dent one." The plain man in the street sees no 



224 THE QUESTION 

evidential value — i.e. proof of Raymond Lodge's 
survival — in a medium guessing that a group of 
officers should be photographed in the open, with 
canes in their hands. 

Among the communications which Sir Oliver dis- 
creetly classes as " rather evidential " is that from 
Feda about a peacock in the garden at Mariemont 
which was drolly named " Mr. Jackson," and which 
had tumbled down and broken its neck. Sir Oliver 
gives Feda a lead by asking (the question is 
addressed through her to Raymond) : " Do you 
remember a bird in our garden? " " Perhaps," he 
naively adds, " it was unfortunate that I had men- 
tioned a bird first." (It certainly was, because it 
"gave away the whole show" to the medium.) 
Feda makes some bad shots; "she got rather be- 
wildered"; then follows a further question: "Well, 
we will go on to something else now: I don't want 
to bother him about birds. Ask him does he re- 
member Mr. Jackson?" Feda: "Yes, going away, 
going away, he says . . . fine bird, put him on a 
pedestal." The bird, Sir Oliver says, was stuffed 
and mounted on a wooden stand. " If this," he 
adds, " was not telepathy from me, it seems to show 
a curious knowledge of what is going on at his 
[Raymond's] home." It does: but family pets are 
often stuffed — and so, it would seem, are their 
owners, by mediums! What hindered the mediums 
from keeping themselves in touch with all the 
happenings at Mariemont? They were all on the 
scent. 

So much for the inferences from the Faunus 
" message," the group photograph, and " Mr. Jack- 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 225 

son." * It seems scarcely worth while to summarise 
detailed reports of communications at sittings which 
Sir Oliver and the various members of his family 
held with Mr. Peters and Mrs. Leonard : the more so 
as the same importance is not attached to them as 
to the three " evidential " cases just dealt with. In 
truth, they make dreary and often repellent read- 
ing, and warrant the apology which sometimes Sir 
Oliver offers for them as " only partially satis- 
factory." The happenings at the later seances are 
deprived of any value by the fact that the sitters 
were known to the mediums. Sometimes the me- 
diums as vehicles of communication are dispensed 
with. The comment why there is ever any occasion 
to employ these " middlemen " suggests itself. Sir 
Oliver tells us that he and his family had private 
seances at their own home, when, occasionally, " the 
table got rather rampageous and had to be quieted 
down: sometimes it and things like flower-pots got 
broken." At one sitting, which was opened with 
silent prayer, the table made amorous attempts " to 
get into Lady Lodge's lap; made most caressing 
movements to and fro, and seemed as if it could 
not get close enough to her." 2 

Space may be given to a few specimens of the 
communications made easier, so " Moonstone " says, 
because "NOT ONLY IS THE PARTITION 
SO THIN THAT YOU CAN HEAR THE 
OPERATIONS ON THE OTHER SIDE, 
BUT A BIG HOLE HAS BEEN MADE." 

1 Mr. Walter Cook's Reflections on Raymond supplies, in com- 
pendious form, a destructive analysis of the " evidence " from which 
Sir Oliver Lodge draws momentous conclusions. 

a Raymond, p. 217. 



226 THE QUESTION 

f (Printed in capitals in Raymond. 1 ) " A remarkably 
evidential and identifying message," is Sir Oliver's 
comment, because, as he points out, it is parallel 
with " a tunnel-boring simile " in his Survival of 
Man. 2 This " evidential " message came through 
Mr. Vout Peters, who, of course, had not read that 
book! 

Evidence as to the continued interest of the dis- 
carnate in mundane affairs is supplied by Raymond 
through " Feda." He mourns over the defection 
of Greece, prophesies victory for Russia and realises 
" the seriousness sometimes of this war." He prom- 
ises his mother that he will be with them at Christmas, 
and in answer to her wonderment how he gets his 
clothes he says: 

" They are all man-u-fac-tured. (Feda stumbling 
over long words. 3 ) Can you fancy you see me in 
white robes? Mind, I didn't care for them at first, 
and I wouldn't wear them. Just like a fellow gone 
to a country where there's a hot climate — an ig- 
norant fellow! . . . Apparently, as far as I can 
gather, the rotting wool appears to be used for 
making things like tweeds on our side. But I know 
I am jumping; I'm guessing at it. My suit, I 
expect, was made from decayed worsted on your 
side." [In a footnote to this Sir Oliver naively 
says : " I have not yet traced the source of all this 
supposed information." Doubtless, if he will call 
again at Maida Vale, Mrs. Leonard can supply 

it.] 

J P, 100. *P. 234. (1915 edition.) 

3 Raymond, p. 189. She does not stumble over " acclimatised," which 
follows immediately after, she quickly learns to pronounce " manufac- 
ture" correctly (p. 199) and talks of "long orations" (p. 160). 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 227 

" My body's very similar to the one I had before. 
I pinch myself sometimes to see if it's real, and it 
is, but it doesn't seem to hurt as much as when I 
pinched the flesh body. The internal organs don't 
seem constituted on the same lines as before. . . . 
Oh, there's one thing," he says. " I have never seen 
anybody bleed." 

Sir Oliver. Has he got eyes and ears? 

Feda. Yes, yes, and eyelashes and eyebrows, 
exactly the same, and a tongue and teeth. He has 
got a new tooth now in place of another one he had. 
. . . He knew a man that had lost an arm, but he 
has got another one. Yes, he has got two arms 
now. He seemed as if without a limb when first he 
entered the astral. ... I am told that when any 
one's blown to pieces, it takes some time for the 
spirit body to complete itself, to gather itself all 
in and to be complete. 1 

O. J. L. What about bodies that are burnt? 

Feda. Oh, if they get burnt by accident, if they 
know about it on this side, they detach the spirit 
first. What we call a spirit doctor comes round 
and helps. . . . We have terrible trouble some- 
times over people who are cremated too soon; they 
shouldn't be. There are men here and women here 
. . . there don't seem to be any children born here. 
People are sent into the physical body to have chil- 
dren on the earth plane; they don't have them here. 
. . . People here try to provide everything that is 
wanted. A chap came over the other day who would 
have a cigar. ' That's finished them,' he thought. 
He means he thought they would never be able to 

1 Pp. 194, 195. 



228 THE QUESTION 

provide that. But there are laboratories over here, 
and they manufacture all sorts of things in them. 
Not like you do, out of solid matter, but out of 
essences, and ethers, and gases. It's not the same 
as on the earth plane, but they were able to manu- 
facture what looked like a cigar. He didn't try one 
himself, because he didn't care to; you know he 
wouldn't want to. But the other chap jumped at 
it. But when he began to smoke it, he didn't think 
so much of it; he had four altogether; and now he 
doesn't look at one. 1 Some call for whisky sodas. 
Don't think I'm stretching it when I tell you that 
they can manufacture even that. But when they 
have had one or two, they don't seem to want it so 
much." 2 

Evidently Havana cigars and potable whisky 
spoiled the palate for celestial products. The savage 
method of supplying tobacco to the discarnates, as 
exampled in the following incident, shows more con- 
sideration, and no mean ethical code. At the funeral 
of a Chookteha woman a man drove furiously to the 
spot, " leaped from the sledge before it stopped and 
gave a packet to her son, saying something which I 
did not hear. Afterwards I found that the man had 
owed some tobacco to a friend, who died before the 
loan was repaid, and the borrower now availed him- 
self of this opportunity to return the tobacco by the 
old woman." Her body, the sledge which bore it 
and her household chattels, and the deer that dragged 
it were all placed on the funeral pile, the spirit of 
the tobacco ascending with her own. 3 

1 P. 197. 2 P. 198. 

» In Far N.E. Siberia, p. 145. By I. W. Shklovsky. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 229 

The communications take a graver turn when, at 
a seance given by Mrs. Kennedy to Sir Oliver, he 
asks: "Before you go, Raymond, I want to ask a 
serious question. Have you been let to see Christ? " 

" Father, I shall see Him presently. It is not 
time yet. I am not ready. But I know He lives, 
and I know He comes here. All the sad ones see 
Him if no one else can help them. Paul has seen 
Him: you see he had such a lot of pain, poor chap. 
I am not expecting to see Him yet, father. I shall 
love to when it's the time — Raymond." 1 

In a later chapter headed " A Few More Records, 
with some Un verifiable Matter " we are told that 
Raymond, at a " strange and striking sitting " given 
to Lady Lodge, spoke thus through the little Indian 
"control": 

" Mother, I went to a gorgeous place the other 
day." 

" Lady Lodge. Where was it? " 

" Goodness knows ! I was permitted, so that I 
might see what was going on in the Highest Sphere. 
Generally the High Spirits come to us. I wonder 
if I can tell you what it looked like!" Sir Oliver 
Lodge omits " the description and the brief reported 
utterance which followed." His restraint is to be 
commended and imitated. 

" I felt," Raymond continues, " exalted, purified, 
lifted up. I was kneeling, I couldn't stand up. I 
wanted to kneel. Mother, I thrilled from head to 
foot. He didn't come near me, and I didn't feel I 
wanted to go near him. Didn't feel I ought. The 
Voice was like a bell. I can't tell you what he was 

1 P. 207. 



230 THE QUESTION 

dressed or robed in. All seemed a mixture of shin- 
ing colours." 1 And so it goes on for two more 
pages, which need not be quoted here. I prefer to 
follow Sir Oliver in making no comment on the 
" unverifiable matter." He passes on to offer 
explanations of defects in Feda's " style and 
grammar." But grammar is not a strong point 
with the dwellers in the Beyond. When a sitter 
told the medium that he wished to communicate 
with Lindley Murray, the question was put: "Are 
you the spirit of that great grammarian? " The 
reply came: " It's me." 

Mrs. Wriedt has a short-cut method of communi- 
cation with the Beyond in dispensing with controls. 
She makes use of an aluminium trumpet which 
" assists the concentration of vibrations from those 
operating on the other side as a megaphone does 
between operators on the physical plane." A few 
feet separate her from the sitter, near whom the 
trumpet is placed on the floor; the light is then 
switched off and the anxious inquirer sits " in the 
velvet-black darkness waiting for the unknown." 
Mrs. Wriedt does not pass into any trance, but talks 
naturally; voices, sometimes mixed, as if two or 
more spirits are struggling to make themselves 
heard, speak from the trumpet; the answers to the 
questions put by the inquirer are sometimes a little 
" elusive, unsatisfying " at a first sitting, but at 
subsequent sittings they are more coherent: it is 

1 P. 231. Cf. Tuckett, p. 324. At a sitting given by Mrs. Piper at 
Sir Oliver Lodge's, at which his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, were 
present, the spirit of his dead brother, Dr. Ted Thompson, answers 
through his control a question put by Mr. Thompson : " Do you ever 
see Christ?" "Occasionally we do, but not often: He is far superior 
to us, infinitely superior," and so forth, to the same effect. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 231 

the old dodge — the medium needs time and oppor- 
tunity to acquire the information that shall remove 
the scepticism aroused by " a single visit." The 
spirits with whom Mrs. Wriedt gets into direct touch 
range from cardinals to clowns. Cardinal Newman 
is heard to utter a " Latin Benediction " and that 
master of vigorous and pellucid English speaks thus 
in cryptic tautology : " It seems to me that I put 
forth the wrong light, and it was quenched out as 
suddenly as I was quenched out, and I had to be 
quenched out so that it had to be quenched out." 
Cecil Rhodes says that he is glad he " did not leave 
Stead his money." Perhaps he has given Stead his 
reasons for this want of confidence; we are not told. 
One of the discarnates, Greyfeather, probably a Red 
Indian, says: "We heapy much glad to see you." 
And the ubiquitous, whilom murdering, ruffian, John 
King, joins the seance singing, of course in trumpet 
tones, " Lead, Kindly Light." 

The spirit voices of relatives and friends are not 
easily recognisable, but for this, we are told, there 
is a perfectly common-sense explanation in the fact 
that the difference in tone of physical voices is due 
to the formation of the organs through which they 
operate, and these disintegrating as they do with 
the physical body, the voice to which we have been 
accustomed cannot be carried on into the new field 
of existence. Why only the voice should be affected 
by this change in the spiritual anatomy is not clear, 
since a lady to whom Mrs. Wriedt gave a sitting 
recognised an uncle " by the manner of his laugh." x 

To sum up. The impression left after reading 

1 " The Great Problem." The London Magazine, February, 1917. 



232 THE QUESTION 

the tedious, ambiguous and repellent " communica- 
tions " which Sir Oliver Lodge and others believe 
to have come from a spirit world through the several 
controls — the little Indian girl, the yogi, the old 
washerwoman, and by the " direct voices " through 
trumpets — is only to deepen a conviction that they 
need no assumption of the supernormal to explain 
them. They are the utterances of Mrs. Leonard, 
Mr. Vout Peters, Mrs. Wriedt and the rest of the 
mediums, some of whom may, with a large charity, be 
credited with believing themselves to be the vehicles 
of " control " revelations, or, with less charity and 
more truth, be classed with the tricksters who 
" work the oracle " by muscle-reading, sham trances, 
skilful guessings aided by hints from the sitters and 
by tapping common or special sources of informa- 
tion. They are either dreamy neurotics or humbugs. 
" The amount of sophistication," Sir Oliver Lodge 
naively says, " varies according to the quality of the 
medium," x and, it may be added, according to the 
gullibility of the consultant. 

Sir W. F. Barrett's revised issue of his On the 
Threshold of a New World of Thought, under its 
new title of On the Threshold of the Universe, ap- 
peared when this book was nearly completed. It is 
advertised as " supplementing in a most striking 
manner the evidence adduced by Sir Oliver Lodge 
in Raymond JJ ; hence comment upon it falls into 
place in this section. Sir William reminds his 
readers that he began investigation into " alleged 
supernormal phenomena " forty years ago, and that 
the result of the co-operation of one or two friends 

1 Raymond, p. 87. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 233 

in that investigation was the founding of the Society 
for Psychical Research in 1882. The candour which 
informs the present work is manifest in admission 
of the difficulties besetting a momentous subject. 
His general attitude is one of alternating belief and 
non-committal. As a Swedenborgian he does not 
subscribe to all the articles of the Spiritualist Creed 
without qualification. In 1886 he stated that, re- 
viewing the numerous seances which he had attended 
during the previous fifteen years, he found that " by 
far the larger part of the results obtained had 
absolutely no evidential value in favour of Spiritual- 
ism; either the condition of total darkness forbade 
any trustworthy conclusions, or the results were 
nothing more than could be explained by a low order 
of juggling. A few cases, however, stand out 
as exceptions." 1 One " exception," apparently, is 
not thus explained. Forty-one years ago Sir 
William satisfied himself that only by the action 
of "an unseen intelligence " could be explained a 
series of raps, scratchings and movements of tables 
which occurred whenever a ten-year-old girl was 
present. And that nothing has shaken his credulity, 
despite the report of his own Society condemning 
the poltergeists as a group of mischievous hussies 
(see ante, p. 86), is evidenced in his remark that 
" no doubt whatever rests in his own mind as to 
the reality and supernormal character of these ut- 
terly meaningless phenomena." 2 He prepares his 
readers for further admissions. " I believe," he 
says, " that Slade had genuine supernormal powers." 
He shares Sir William Crookes's belief in Home's 

1 P. 36. s P. 80. 



234 THE QUESTION 

" enormous elongation," finding confirmation of this 
in a similar phenomenon occurring among the Neo- 
platonists, 1 while the records of levitation of holy 
men and women further satisfy him that Home 
accomplished the same miracle. 

Concerning this and other " almost incredible 
phenomena," Sir William Barrett says : " Since 
they occurred I have been assured by Sir William 
Crookes that no subsequent criticism has failed to 
shake [more correctly, has shaken] his opinion of 
their supernormal character, the elaborate precau- 
tions he took preventing the possibility of any fraud. 
Moreover, Sir William Crookes, in his Presidential 
Address to the British Association in 1898, had the 
courage to state in reference to these investigations 
he had nothing to retract and that he adhered to 
the statements he had published." 2 The " almost 
incredible phenomena " are set forth by Sir William 
Barrett in schedule form, of which the following is 
a summary. It may be headed — 

SIR WILLIAM CROOKES'S CREDO 

1. I believe that raps and sounds varying in loudness from ticks to 
thuds to be caused by an unseen intelligence. 

2. That light and heavy bodies can be moved without visible cause 
or the contact of any human being. 

3. That bodies can alter their weight. 

4. That D. D. Home was raised completely off the ground. 

5. That musical instruments can be played without human .hands 
and in a way impossible to be played by normal means. 

6. That luminous clouds condense into perfectly formed hands which 
presently fade away. 

7. That intelligent messages are written by unseen hands. 

8. That red-hot coals can be handled without injury. 

9. " Most astonishing of all," 3 that " under elaborate test conditions 

1 P. 73. 2 P. 55. 

8 "It remains to this day absolutely inexplicable" (!). P. 87. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 235 

a materialised and beautiful female figure several times appeared 
clothed in a white robe, so real, that not only was its pulse taken, but 
it was repeatedly photographed, sometimes by the aid of the electric 
arc light, and on one occasion simultaneously with and beside the 
entranced medium. 

Possibly the phenomenon of ventriloquism explains 
Sir William Barrett's hesitation to accept as genuine 
the " direct voice " communications of "a well- 
known American medium," x who may be identified 
with Mrs. Wriedt, and he leaves " the question of 
spirit photographs an open one," though showing 
leanings towards their " veridical character." He 
hesitates to discard what the late Mr. Stead and 
Dr. A. R. Wallace accepted. A like hesitation 
attends his verdict on the " notorious medium," 
Eusapia Palladino, because so " competent an in- 
vestigator " as the late " eminent criminologist, 
Professor Lombroso, and the neurologist, Professor 
Morselli, were convinced of the genuineness of the 
extraordinary phenomena they witnessed." 2 An 
appendix is allotted to an account of these, of which 
the reader, probably, has had more than enough 
already. As for Cesare Lombroso, he went per 
saltum from one extreme to another. Two days 
before his death (in 1909) there appeared an 
English translation of his last book, After Death — 
What? in which he tells us that after " making it 
the indefatigable pursuit of a lifetime to defend the 
thesis that every force is a property of matter and 
the soul an emanation of the brain," his neuro- 
pathological practice compelled reconsideration of 
the relation of mind to body, and resulted in his 
acceptance of all the phenomena of spiritualism, both 

1 P. 85. s P. 67. 



236 THE QUESTION 

physical and psychical, as genuine. He swallowed 
the lot at a gulp, from table raps to materialisation 
of the departed, spirit photographs and spirit voices ; 
every story, old or new, alike from savage and 
civilised sources, confirming his will to believe. He 
accepted, though only at second-hand, the story that 
a babe named Yenker gave replies to raps when two 
months old ; of another wonder-child who " wrote 
automatically when nine days old," and of " Cami- 
sard babes of fourteen or fifteen months — even while 
still sucklings — preaching with the purest diction." 
The legends of holy babes, future saints, who refused 
to take milk from their mother's breasts on Fridays 
and on other fasting days, pale before marvels in which 
the credulous professor, and those whose credulity he 
has strengthened, will see fulfilment of the Psalmist's 
words : " Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings 
hast thou ordained strength." 1 

In the semi-obscurity of a red light Eusapia 
redeemed her promise to Lombroso that he should 
see his mother. There detached itself from the 
curtain of the medium's cabinet a short, veiled figure, 
which came near him and whispered in his ear, 
" Cesar, fio mio/ J " This," he says, " was not her 
habitual expression, which, when she met me, was 
mio fol, but the mistakes in expression made by the 
apparitions of the deceased are well known, and how 
they borrow from the language of the psychic and 
of the experimenters. Removing the veil from her 
face for a moment, she gave me a kiss." 

Allowing for differences in detail, this suggests a 
story which Sir William Barrett quotes as among 

1 Ps. viii., 2. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 237 

" some remarkable instances where the dying person 
appears to see and recognise some of his deceased 
relatives and friends." While at the bedside of a 
Mr. James Moore, who lay at the point of death, 
Dr. Wilson, of New York, says that " something 
happened which is utterly indescribable. Taking my 
hand in both of his, while he appeared perfectly 
rational and as sane as any man I have ever seen, 
the only way that I can express it is that he was 
transported into another world, and although I can- 
not satisfactorily explain the matter to myself, I am 
fully convinced that he had entered the golden city 
— for he said in a stronger voice than he had used 
since I had attended him : ' There is mother ! Why, 
mother, have you come here to see me? No, no, I 
am coming to see you. Just wait, mother, I am 
almost over. Wait, mother, wait, mother! ' " 

While Sir William admits that " one cannot al- 
ways attach much weight " to this sort of evidence, 
the citation of the story commits him to the con- 
clusion, vague as this may be, that there is some- 
thing in it. It has no evidential value whatever, 
and is all of a piece with the many stories which 
have their explanation in hallucinations of the dying. 
Precious to me above all memories is that of my 
brave, bright, beautiful-souled mother, hope of re- 
union with whom I would joyfully nurture were 
there grounds for it. She is often in my thoughts; 
her portrait hangs near me, and it may be that if 
delirium accompanies my death, a vision as of her 
may appear, and then, perchance, an outburst of 
triumphant words escape my dying lips which on- 
lookers, if such there be, might construe as evidence 



238 THE QUESTION 

that mother and son have met on " the threshold of 
the Unseen." As not without bearing on this, I 
rarely get quickly to sleep, and, to invite it, I often 
recite long passages from Scripture and hymns learnt 
in boyhood, and poems with a religious flavour — e.g. 
Leigh Hunt's Abou ben Adhem. I may do this " in 
the hour and article of death," but no warrant should 
be drawn therefrom that I returned at the last to 
a belief abandoned years ago when the mind was 
unclouded. 1 

While Sir William Barrett has no hesitation in 
pronouncing that Eusapia " is a medium of a low 
moral type," and refuses to have anything to do 
with her, no such reluctance attaches to his opinion 
of the Rev. Stainton Moses. Of that medium's 
" sanity and honesty," and as a man " wholly in- 
capable of deceit," Sir William has no doubt. 
Moses " experienced levitation no less than ten 
times," and that phenomenon was manifested by 
" a large, very heavy mahogany dining-table " in 
his house. Sir William would do well to read a 
chapter in Mr. Maskelyne and Dr. Weatherly's 
The Supernatural? in which is explained the trick 
of lifting heavy furniture performed some years back 
by the " Magnetic Lady." 2 

He tells us that, in 1899, the "Moses of old" 
purported to communicate with Mrs. Piper, starting 
with forebodings of wars to come, and then adding 
" a good deal of solemn twaddle." Concerning that 
lady, he frankly tells this story : " A Dr. Stanley 
Hall asked her if his niece, Bessie Beals, could com- 

1 Cf. Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, p. 130. By Henry 
Maudsley, M.D. a Pp. 274-288. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 239 

municate. She professed to come, and gave various 
messages at several sittings. But she had never 
existed, Dr. Hall having given a fictitious name and 
relationship." 1 Sir William naively says: "Thus 
it will be seen that we cannot take these communi- 
cations at their face value, as they are sometimes 
manifestly false." Then he hedges. " They prob- 
ably represent phases of the hypnotic self of Mrs. 
Piper, created by some verbal or telepathic sug- 
gestion from the mind of the sitter." After this 
it seems scarcely worth while to seriously discuss his 
contention that Mrs. Piper is the vehicle of com- 
munications from the discarnate spirits of Dr. 
Hodgson and Mr. Myers. His usual candour for- 
sakes him in his silence about the sealed letter which 
Mr. Myers left behind him. 

As a study in logomachy, in " darkening counsel 
by words," Sir William's attempted definition of 
mediumistic power supplies example. " The nexus 
between the seen and the unseen may be physical, 
physiological, or psychical, but whichever it may be, 
it is a specialised substance, or organ, or organism 
. . . it is doubtless a peculiar psychical state that 
confers mediumistic power, but we know nothing of 
its nature, and we often ruin our experiment and 
lose our results by our ignorance. . . . " 2 The 
phenomenon of materialisation of a part, or of the 
whole body, is termed " ectoplasy, by which is meant 
the power of forming outside the body of the medium 
a concentration of vital energy, or vitalised matter, 
which operates temporarily in the same way as the 
body from which it is drawn; so that visible, audible 

1 On the Threshold of the Unseen, p. 240. a P. 120. 



240 THE QUESTION 

or tangible, human-like phenomena are reproduced." * 
Let those who can make sense of all this, as of 
kindred hypotheses by which an assumption is sought 
to be proved. " Intuitive certainty," says Froude, 
" is beyond the reach of argument." 2 

However, Sir William shows some return to a 
rational consideration of the matter in the recogni- 
tion that an entranced medium " is not in a normal 
condition, but shows evidence of hysteria . . . " 3 
that the messages often spring from, and are in- 
variably influenced by, the medium's own subcon- 
scious life, 4 " so that it would be rash to infer that 
they proceed from a discarnate human personality," 5 
and that, " in fact, ' psychical research ' in general 
deals with the varied manifestations and operations 
of the unconscious part of our personality." 6 The 
evolved is the involved: Nihil est in intellectus quod 
non prius in sensu fuerit. Sensation is the raw ma- 
terial of thought. 

The book abounds with so many " hedging " quali- 
fications and irreconcilable assessments of so-called 
spiritual phenomena that there will be no surprise 
occasioned to learn that, in Sir William Barrett's 
judgment, " the inference commonly drawn, that 
spirit communications teach us the necessary and 
inherent immortality of the soul, is a mischievous 
error. They show us that life can exist in the 
unseen, but entrance on a life after death does not 
necessarily mean immortality — i.e. eternal persistence 
of our personality — nor does it prove that survival 

1 P. 87. 

2 History of England. Vol. xii., p. 199. (Cabinet Edition.) 

8 P. 123. « P. 33. 8 P. 326. 8 P. 134. 



MRS. LEONARD AND OTHERS 241 

after death extends to all" 1 How far Sir Oliver 
Lodge and other defenders of the faith will agree 
with this is here no matter of concern, but the sug- 
gestion of a selected number of immortals evokes 
the comment that, if the " controls " be among these, 
the doctrine of the survival of the fittest has no 
extension to a discarnate state. No " trailing clouds 
of glory from God who is our home " follow the 
motley group through whom not a single ennobling 
message has come; only nauseating drivel and banal 
inanity. In the quotation from the Spirit Teach- 
ings of Mr. Stainton Moses 2 we have a sample of 
the tawdry rhetoric on transcendental themes which 
fills kindred deliverances of other "seers" of the 
Lake Harris and Davis type. They invite the 
question : " Should a wise man utter vain knowledge, 
and fill his belly with the east wind? " 3 

1 P. 287. ' See ante, p. 55. 3 Job xv. 2. 



IX 

CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE 

ONE would have thought that, to those who 
believe in them, the spirits had given suffic- 
ing proof of their existence. But, appar- 
ently, these discarnates are not content, so they 
have devised a plan of supplying further evidence 
which appears to reflect small credit on their in- 
telligence: it seems, in its confusion of nature, to 
be the outcome of psychical poltergeists. Perhaps 
it is their fun to relieve the monotony, and to bewilder 
friends " on this side." The plan is for the same 
spirit to send part of a message through one medium 
and the rest of it through another medium, these 
mediums often being thousands of miles apart and 
unknown to each other. It is then left to the inter- 
preter to put the unintelligible parts together and 
make of them, as best they can, one intelligible 
whole. The method has been termed " cross- 
correspondence "; appropriately so, if by cross is 
meant confusion. The ingenuity which is necessary 
to the successful interpretation of such communi- 
cations from the spirits, so as to make sense of 
nonsense, is of a sort compared to which the de- 
cipherment of the cipher which proves that Bacon 
wrote Shakespeare's dramas is child's play. 

Sir Oliver Lodge calls this cross-correspondence 
" the most evidential class of utterance." He adds 

242 



CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE 243 

that " the subject is so large and complicated that 
any one who wishes to form an opinion on it is bound 
to study the detailed publications by Mr. Piddington, 
Mrs. Verrall, Miss Johnson and others in recent 
volumes of the Proceedings of the Society for Psy- 
chical Research. . . . The main feature of this 
kind of communication is that we are not required 
to study the phenomena exhibited by a single 
medium actuated by a number of ostensible con- 
trols, but, conversely, the utterance of one ostensible 
control effected through the contributary agency of 
several different mediums, each of whom writes auto- 
matically and independently of each other, and, at 
first, were unaware that any kind of correspondence 
was going on. In many cases, moreover, the mes- 
sages, as separately obtained, were quite unintel- 
ligible and only exhibited a meaning when they 
were subsequently put together by another 
person." x 

A feature of the cross-correspondence is the 
numerous obscure literary and classical allusions 
which fill them, the identification of which needs 
the rarest erudition, and the explanations of which 
are to be found not in the scholarship of spirits, but 
in the subconscious intelligence of the automatist, 
as in the case of the late Mrs. Verrall, who was an 
excellent classicist. A passive condition of the will 
is induced: "Whether," says she, "I write in light 
or dark, I do not look at the paper. I perceive a 
word or two, but never understand whether it makes 

1 Survival of Man, pp. 222, 223. " If their assumed meaning be con- 
firmed they have a value which can hardly be over-estimated." — Pro- 
fessor Barrett, Psychical Research, p. 230. " Ifs " and " assumptions " 
play a large part in the occult. 



244 THE QUESTION 

sense with what goes before. Under these circum- 
stances, it will be seen that though I am aware at 
the moment of writing what language my hand is 
using, when the script is finished I often cannot say, 
till I read it, what language has been used, as the 
recollection of the words passes away with extreme 
rapidity." x 

A paper on the " Ear of Dionysius " by the Rt. 
Hon. Gerald Balfour, published in the last-issued 
volume of the Proceedings of the Society for Psy- 
chical Research, has been the subject of recent dis- 
cussion in The Times Literary Supplement 2 and 
The Saturday Westminster Gazette? The con- 
clusions arrived at by Mr. Balfour and others war- 
rant reference to the contents of that paper. 

On the 26th August, 1910, an automatist, whose 
pseudonym is " Mrs. Willett," purported to have 
received from a discarnate source this bald message: 
" Dionysius's Ear — the lobe." Apparently its mean- 
ing was obscure to Mrs. Verrall, who is reported as 
being present, since her husband, Professor Verrall, 
expressed surprise at her ignorance. The reference 
is to the story that the Tyrant of that name was 
wont to sit near the prison-grotto in the Latomia 
quarries at Syracuse, which had a remarkable echo, 
so that he might hear what the Athenian pris- 
oners were saying: hence its name: " L'Orecchio 
di Dionisio." Mrs. Willett was allowed the ample 
period of three years and a half to brood over the 
significance of this communication, with the tenor 

1 Proceedings S. P. B. Vol. xx., part liii. " On a Series of Automatic 
Writings, by Mrs. A. W. Verrall." 

s 3rd April, 1917, and four following issues. 
8 12th May, 1917. 



CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE 245 

of which Professors Verrall and Butcher were made 
acquainted. Professor Verrall will be remembered 
by his fine study of Euripides the Rationalist, con- 
cerning which George Meredith wrote to me. " It 
is a key to the poet's contempt and loathing of the 
gods of his country." Professor Butcher will be 
best remembered as joint translator with Andrew 
Lang of the Odyssey, concerning which it was said 
that " Butcher turned it out of Greek and Lang 
turned it into English." Professor Butcher died in 
December, 1910, and Professor Verrall in June, 
1912, each of them before Mrs. Willett had any 
further communications from the other side about 
the " Ear." These came to her in succession in 
January, February and March, 1914. They were 
full of classical allusions to nymphs, heroes and 
philosophers — Galatea, Ulysses, Aristotle and others, 
and psychical experts affirmed that they came from 
the two discarnate professors: so that there was not 
one discarnate, but three discarnates. 

But of this jumble of incoherence the would-be 
interpreters who came to the aid of the bewildered, 
non-classical recipient, could make neither head nor 
tail. However, on the 2nd August, 1915 — five years 
after the receipt of the first communication — there 
came to Mrs. Verrall this supplemental piece of in- 
formation: " Cythera. Philox. He laboured in the 
stone quarries and drew upon the earlier writer for 
material for his Satire, Jealousy." There is nothing 
recondite about this. Dr. Smith's Classical Diction- 
ary tells us that Philoxenus of Cythera was a dis- 
tinguished Greek poet (435-380 B.C.) who was cast 
into the " Ear " prison by Dionysius because he 



246 THE QUESTION 

refused to revise one of the Tyrant's poems, bluntly 
telling him that the best way to correct it was to 
draw a black line through the whole of it. Light 
on the mention of Galatea in one of the communi- 
cations to Mrs. Willett is thrown by an article on 
Philoxenus in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, wherein 
it is said that his masterpiece " was the Cyclops, a 
pastoral burlesque on the love of the Cyclops for the 
fair Galatea, written to avenge himself on Dionysius, 
who was wholly or partially blind of one eye." 
Among Mr. Verrall's books there was found a 
copy of a work by an American scholar on the 
Greek Melic Poets, which deals, among other au- 
thors, with Philoxenus, and of which Dr. Verrall 
made use in his lectures. In Mrs. Verrall's talks 
with her husband (she had studied and taught both 
Latin and Greek), gossip about that poet probably 
had place, and the curiosity which the first pur- 
ported communication aroused in Mrs. Willett must 
have led to her looking up references and gathering 
scraps of classical lore from her learned co-auto- 
matist. Mr. Balfour asserts that the two had no 
communications on the subject, a statement hard to 
reconcile with what is known of the relations be- 
tween people eager to solve a conundrum, and shar- 
ing a common belief. But Mrs. Verrall is no longer 
with us; both she and her husband — humorist as 
well as humanist — are beyond the marge of our 
inquiry, although what he would have said may be 
guessed at. 

Psychical ingenuity has no limits, and while the 
comment of the sceptic on its toilsome results is, 
Parturiunt monies, nascetur ridiculus mus, the be- 



CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE 247 

liever, in the person of Mr. Balfour, affirms that 
" the communications have their sources in some intel- 
ligence or intelligences not in the body," and not — as 
is the true explanation — in the potential conscious- 
ness of the automatist, or, as has been suggested, by 
her looking up guide-books to Sicily and reading 
The Fortunes of Nigel. Sir William Barrett is 
satisfied as to the " positive evidence of an ability 
and wide classical knowledge quite beyond the power 
of the automatist. The cryptic allusions, it is true, 
need considerable ingenuity, learning and skill to 
make the evidence intelligible to ordinary minds. 
This recondite mode of communication may be 
adopted to prevent suspicion that the message is 
derived from terrene minds by telepathy, or other 
sources of error. Those who have not the necessary 
time or knowledge to unravel these mosaics of classi- 
cal scholarship must rest content with the assurance 
that competent and unbiassed investigators have been 
convinced that they afford convincing evidence of 
the identity of the deceased persons from whom they 
profess to come." x Others there are who, after 
reading Mr. Balfour's paper, will agree with Sir 
Edward Brabrook : " I confess I hope for myself 
a better employment when I reach the discarnate 
condition than that of spending years in the at- 
tempt to communicate to my friends through an 
' automatist ' inconclusive evidences of imaginary 
erudition." 2 

The following throws light on the origin of the 
inconsequential rubbish that fills much of the cross- 

1 On the Threshold of the Unseen, p. 245. 

3 Times Literary Supplement, 3rd April, 1917. 



248 THE QUESTION 

correspondence to the bewilderment of the ordinary 
mind: — 

" 1 Maeloes Road, W., 
" October 22, 1908. 
" Dear Clodd., — The anthropologist gets as near 
his primitive man as he can, far enough away; and 
the psychist takes what evidence he gets to go to a 
jury. However, as you are rather too old a bird to 
learn a new tune (while the older bird tries to pick 
up the melodies as he goes along), here is a curious 
psychological game with nothing in it to shock the 
retrograde and obsolete. You make your mind as 
blank of conscious thought as you can and you wait 
for the words — rather than thoughts — that pop into 
your head. As one rapidly forgets, you write down 
every clause and wait for more. The result would 
make a boiled owl laugh. I found this out only 
to-day and have been giggling over the records. Do 
try it; one catches an aspect of one's nature hitherto 
veiled. As for you, as you see illusions hypna- 
gogique the faces spoken of [I had told Lang that 
sometimes, before getting to sleep, a row of leering 
faces would pass before me], you are much more 
hallucinable than most people. I find that most 
people not only don't see them but don't believe 
that anybody does. This is the true scientific spirit. 
Bless you, I do not exclude wild animals, but we 
have evidence as to their psychic faculties. Dogs, 
one knows, and cats are highly psychical;, but we 
have no companionship with tigers, etc. 

" Yours sincerely, 

" A. Lang." 



CROSS-CORRESPONDENCE 249 

In The Morning Post of the same date he describes 
the experiment referred to in the above letter. He 
made his mind as blank as possible and watched 
for any words that floated into his consciousness. 
" These words," he says, " I wrote down. The 
results were very laughable. My own way of writ- 
ing is not Johnsonian. But the style of my unpre- 
meditated writings was full of long words. The first 
words almost that swam uncalled into my ken were, 
' affability is the characteristic of the dawdling persecu- 
tor.' A longer ' message ' began thus : ' Observing the 
down-grade tendency of the Sympneumatic currents, 
the Primate remarked that he could no longer regard 
Kafoozeleum as an aid to hortatory eloquence.' " 

Sir E. B. Tylor quotes from Baron de Gulden- 
stubbe's Pneumatologie Positive, in which he tells 
how the spirits dispense with the material aid of 
Mrs. Verrall and other automatists: "If pieces of 
blank paper are set out in suitable places, the spirits, 
enveloped in their ethereal bodies, will concentrate 
by their force of will electric currents on the paper 
and so form written characters. The Baron pub- 
lishes a mass of facsimiles of spirit writings thus 
obtained. Julius and Augustus Cassar give their 
names near their statues in the Louvre, Juvenal 
produces a ludicrous attempt at a copy of verses: 
Heloise at Pere-la-Chaise informs the world, in 
modern French, that Abelard and she are united 
and happy, and the Baron avers that Hippokrates 
attended him at his quarters in Paris and gave him 
a signature which of itself cured a sharp attack of 
rheumatism in a few minutes." * 

1 Primitive Culture. Vol. i., p. 148. 



X 

theosophy: madame blavatsky 

A LTHOUGH the majority of Spiritualists dis- 
/-% own the connection, their creed has affinities 
with that of Theosophists and of Christian 
Scientists. The foundress of the occult system called 
Theosophy was Helen Petrovna, daughter of a 
Russian colonel. She was married in 1848 — when 
seventeen — to an elderly general named Blavatsky, 
from whom, after three months of boredom, she ran 
away. Of wanton, erratic and romantic nature, she 
started in quest of adventures, amorous and psy- 
chical, both of which, on her own confession, she 
found in plenty. From Hindu gurus, Egyptian 
thaumaturgists, Red Indian medicine-men and 
Voodoo sorcerers, she gathered a heap of miscel- 
laneous experiences, out of which, later on, she 
evolved the farrago known as the Esoteric Philoso- 
phy or Wisdom Religion. Into this, Mrs. Besant 
says, she had been initiated in Tibet by a mysterious 
brotherhood of holy men, endowed with supernatural 
powers, living, like the gods of Lucretius, in 
" sacred, everlasting calm." " They are," the same 
authority adds, " living men who have evolved the 
spiritual nature until the physical body and brain 
consciousness have become ductile instruments for 
the spiritual intelligence, and who, by virtue of this 
evolution, are said to have gained a control over 

250 



THEOSOPHY 251 

natural forces which enables them to bring about 
results that appear to be miraculous. The possi- 
bility of this evolution and the nature of the powers 
inherent in the highly evolved man derive inevitably 
from the postulates of the Esoteric philosophy." x 
The existence of these " Mahatmas," as they are 
called, was not known in Tibet, so my friend, the 
late William Simpson, who was there in 1860, told 
me, and in his Lhasa and its Mysteries, Lieut.-Col. 
Waddell says : " Regarding the so-called Mahatmas, 
it was important to elicit the fact that this Buddhist 
Cardinal, one of the most learned and profound 
scholars in Tibet, was, like the other Lamas I have 
interrogated on the subject, entirely ignorant of any 
such beings." 2 But this is to anticipate. 

Madame Blavatsky has thrown some light on her 
mode of life for twenty-five years after her divorce. 
In a letter to Mr. SolovyorT, her dupe, and after- 
wards her detector, she said: " I will tell how from 
my eighteenth year I tried to get people to talk 
about me and say about me that this man and that 
was my lover and hundreds of them. ... So there 
will be ' the truth about H. P. Blavatsky ' in which 
psychology and her own and others' immorality and 
Rome and politics, and all her own and others 3 filth 
once more will be set out to God's world. I shall 
conceal nothing. It will be a Saturnalia of the 
moral depravity of mankind, this confession of mine, 
a worthy epilogue of my stormy life." 3 On her 
own confession to a Mr. Atsakoff, written in 1874, 

1 Chambers's Encyclopaedia. Art., " Theosophy." ' P. 409. 

8 A Modern Priestess of Isis, pp. 178-181. Abridged and translated 
on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research from the Russian of 
V. S. Solovyoff, by Walter Leaf. 



252 THE QUESTION 

Madame Blavatsky had been a spiritualist for ten 
years, " and now," she added, " all my life is devoted 
to the doctrine." 

She started as a medium in 1872 at Cairo, and 
until the autumn of 1875 maintained herself by 
giving seances and writing on Spiritualism. She 
then settled in New York, where her mediumistic 
powers developed as " astral projections." She 
gave sittings at the house of a brace of notorious 
mediums, the Eddy Brothers, where she met with 
the credulous Colonel Olcott, and, from the " Be- 
yond," with the " pure spirit " of that hardy old 
rascal, John King, with whom we have already 
made acquaintance. Of him she said: "John King 
is a sufficient recompense for all: he is a host in 
himself." A temporary slump in Spiritualism gave 
her the chance of starting in the occult business on 
her own account, and, in conjunction with Colonel 
Olcott, she founded the Theosophist Society in New 
York in October, 1875. To its rooms there came 
other phantom visitors: John King gave place to 
Mahatmas transported thither from their secret 
mountain home in the Himalayas by means of their 
astral bodies, for the Brothers could levitate distances 
that David Douglas Home could not approach, and 
travel whither they chose. Colonel Olcott silenced a 
sceptic by producing as conclusive evidence a turban 
which a Mahatma had left behind him. The super- 
normal power of these holy men was further proven 
by their possession of a world-ether, named Akaz, by 
which wonders were wrought, chiefly as the vehicle 
of letters from Tibet to Madame Blavatsky. Under 
the title of Isis Unveiled she gave to the world in 



THEOSOPHY 253 

1877 the new science and philosophy of which she 
elected herself High Priestess, declaring, with a 
modesty foreign to her nature, that she was " but the 
mouthpiece of a wisdom higher than her own"; the 
chosen medium of the Mahatmas. Their akasic 
force and other causes led her and Olcott to transfer 
the Society's quarters to India (first, in 1878, to 
Bombay and next, in 1882, to Adyar), where the 
Esoteric Philosophy with its fundamental creed — 
reincarnation of the Ego — breathed its native air. 
At Adyar there was set up in the occult room of 
the Theosophic temple a shrine which became the 
scene of miracles of varying value. It lacked the 
glory of adornment usually enriching such sacred 
objects; it was only a wooden cupboard placed 
against the wall, having sliding panels hidden by a 
mirror at the back so that communications to and 
from the Mahatmas could easily be dropped into it. 
" The more advanced initiates so stringently en- 
joined on their fellow-disciples the utmost reverence 
for the shrine that the majority of the native mem- 
bers durst not approach it within some feet, and the 
Europeans respected its sanctity by avoiding all 
sacrilegious handling of it." * With the aid of 
Monsieur and Madame Coulomb, chosen by the 
Priestess as confederates in knavery, many wonders 
were wrought, largely through the akasic force. A 
General Morgan testified to a miracle. On visiting 
the headquarters to see a painting of the Mahatma 
Koot Homi, which was kept in the shrine, he was 
after some delay taken to the " occult " room by 

1 A full description of the shrine is given in the Rev. J. W. Far- 
quhar's Modem Religious Movements in India, p. 448. (1915.) 



254 THE QUESTION 

Madame Coulomb, the custodian. Too hurriedly 
opening the door of the shrine, she pretended that 
she had failed to see that a china saucer, to which 
she attached value, was near its edge, so down fell 
the saucer, dashed to pieces. M. Coulomb was 
despatched to get cement to mend it; the debris was 
collected, tied in a cloth, and deposited in the shrine, 
the door of which was locked. The General re- 
marked to Mr. Damodar, the Joint Recording Sec- 
retary of the Society, that if the Mahatmas thought 
the saucer of importance they could make it whole. 
Soon after this, Mr. Damodar, who seemed to have 
been in the trance state, opened the door of the 
shrine, and drew a letter from the shelf, in which 
was this message: 

" To the small audience present, Madame Coulomb 
has occasion to assure herself that the devil is neither 
so black nor so wicked as he is generally represented : 
the mischief is easily repaired. — K. H." (Koot 
Homi.) 

On uncovering the cloth in which the fragments had 
been put, the saucer was found whole and with no 
trace of any breakage upon it! 

The " miracle " is explained by the fact that there 
was at hand a saucer to match the broken one, 
Madame Coulomb having bought the pair at a store 
on the day when the " accident " occurred. 

After this it is needless to expose other Theosophic 
tricks, but one other shall be mentioned. The boards 
of the wooden ceilings of the several rooms had inter- 
spaces through which letters from the loft above 
could be dropped. By this means Mr. Sinnett, 



THEOSOPHY 255 

whose Esoteric Buddhism compasses the Theosophic 
creed, was the honoured recipient of an important 
communication from Koot Homi. All the letters 
were the handiwork of the Priestess, her writing 
being skilfully varied. 

Three years after her death Mrs. Besant declared 
that since that event she has " received letters in 
the same handwriting as the letters which Madame 
Blavatsky received." * Following on this, the news- 
paper report adds " sensation " in parenthesis. 

In 1884 a preliminary investigation into theo- 
sophical phenomena resulted in the Society for 
Psychical Research sending Dr. Hodgson, who had 
exposed Eusapia Palladino, to India to look fully 
into the matter. One result of his inquiries was to 
explain how the " miracle " of the saucer had been 
worked; and probably he would have discovered 
much more of interest about the shrine but for its 
destruction by Theosophists before his arrival on 
the spot. His report convicted Madame Blavatsky 
of " a long continued combination with other persons 
to produce by ordinary means a series of apparent 
marvels for the support of the Theosophic move- 
ment," and concluded thus: "For our own part we 
regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers 
nor as a mere vulgar adventuress: we think that 
she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance 
as one of the most accomplished, ingenious and 
interesting impostors in history." 

A year after this, at her invitation, Mr. Solovyoff 
visited Madame Blavatsky at Wurzburg, when she 

lte Isis very much Unveiled: the story of the Great Mahatma 
Hoax," p. 24. By F. Edmund Garrett. Westminster Gazette Library, 
1894. 



256 THE QUESTION 

poured scorn on her dupes. "What is one to do," 
she said, " when in order to rule men it is necessary 
to deceive them? . . . for almost invariably the 
more simple, the more silly, and the more gross the 
phenomenon, the more likely it is to succeed." Not 
a hint of this exposure of a woman who was called 
" the most monumental liar in all history " is to be 
found in Mrs. Besant's article already named. On 
the contrary, in a pamphlet published in 1907, 
championing the impostor, Mrs. Besant describes 
her as " passionately indignant when accused of 
sins she loathed; she was generous and forgiving to 
a repentant foe. She had a hundred splendid virtues 
and a few petty failings." The story of Madame 
Blavatsky's career is told in A Modern Priestess 
of Isis and in the sixth chapter of Mr. Podmore's 
Studies in Psychical Research and by Mr. Farquhar. 
She died in 1891, at the age of sixty. Unlike the 
eightfold distribution of the ashes of Gautama the 
Buddha, those of the foundress of Esoteric Bud- 
dhism were divided into three portions, to be dis- 
tributed between Adyar, London and New York. 
Ultimately, the whole of the sacred remains were 
brought to India, where their ultimate disposal by 
Colonel Olcott (he died in 1907) is not clear. But, 
like John Brown, her " soul goes marching on " ; 
thousands of believers in her as an inspired teacher 
are found in both hemispheres; the akasic force is 
unspent. The one redeeming feature in the move- 
ment is its promulgation of the doctrine of ethical 
evolution as fostering a larger charity towards all, 
regardless of " race, sect and class." 



XI 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE — MRS. EDDY 

A GLANCE at the list of Sunday services in 
London given in the Saturday papers shows 
how the movement known as Christian Science 
has caught-on in this country. The " revelation " on 
which it is based came to an American, Mrs. Mary 
Baker Glover Eddy, in 1866, when she was forty- 
five. In that year, she says, " I discovered the Christ 
Science or divine Laws of Life, Truth and Love, 
and named my discovery Christian Science. God has 
been graciously preparing me during many years for 
the reception of this final revelation of the absolute 
divine Principle of scientific mental healing." * As 
a girl she was attractive, high-spirited and sensitive; 
she heard "Voices" when she was eight; later on 
she had attacks of convulsive hysteria, fell into 
cataleptic trances ; in short, was a confirmed neurotic. 
Her father said: " Mary Magdalene had seven 
devils, but our Mary has ten." She became ob- 
sessed by belief in animal magnetism, and when her 
last husband died (she was married three times) 
she said it was due to " malicious mesmerism," which 
she called " the opposite of divine science." Bad 
health, aggravated by " nerves," caused her to con- 
sult a Mr. Quimby, who was a homoeopath, faith- 
healer and crank. To his influence on her may be 

1 Science and Health, p. 107. 
257 



258 THE QUESTION 

traced Christian Science; in fact, he is its real " dis 
coverer." His theory was that disease is " fal- 
reasoning," and this set her on the quest of h 
" discovery." A nerve-shattering accident beft 
her; Quimby came to the rescue, but her recovery 
was wrought by her reading the story of the man 
sick of the palsy, told in the ninth chapter of 
Matthew. " Son," said Jesus to him, " be of good 
cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee." The doubting 
crowd was silenced when at the command of Jesus 
the man took up his bed and walked. Such healing 
power was in these words that she felt herself made 
whole, rose from her bed and summoned her friends 
to behold the wonder. How it came about she told 
them she could not fully understand. " I could only 
assure the physician who attended me that the divine 
Spirit had wrought the miracle — a miracle which later 
I found to be in perfect Scientific accord with divine 
law." x She needed no doctor after that ; she took to 
deep study of the Scriptures; she satisfied herself 
that all sins and diseases are subjective phenomena; 
thought out her subject and with the aid of a literary 
parson, the Rev. J. A. Wiggin, also helping her- 
self bountifully, with his consent, to materials from 
Quimby's manuscripts, put her theory of Meta- 
physical Healing into shape and published it under 
the title of Science and Health, with a Key to the 
Scriptures. It is, in fact, the Bible of the sect. 
Gradually gathering a ring of disciples — many of 
them neurotic women — she founded her new religion. 
Her gospel, like that of the mediums, was not " with- 
out money and without price." At the start her fee 

1 Retrospection and Introspection, p. 38. 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE— MRS. EDDY 259 

to the novitiates was one hundred dollars each, with 
a life annuity of ten per cent, on their future earn- 
ings. Later on, " moved by a strange providence," 
she said, " I was led to name three hundred dollars. 
. . . God has since shown me in multitudinous 
ways the wisdom of this decision." x She died very 
rich. 

From an organisation called the Mother Church 
have sprung offshoots scattered " from China to 
Peru," or, more precisely, to Argentina. A Board 
of Education, of which Mrs. Eddy was the Presi- 
dent, sits in Boston, to examine candidates and issue 
certificates to teachers of Christian Science. The 
sect has no official ministers, but the Readers at the 
Sunday services may indulge the hope that in time 
they may secure promotion as Metaphysical Healers 
or Mind Curists, or Viticulturists, or Magnetic 
Healers, or Phrenopathists, or Medical Clairvoyants, 
or Esoteric Vibrationists, or Psychic Scientists, or 
Mesmerists, or Occultists. The Sunday services 
commend themselves to quiet-seekers. The interval 
for silent prayer, the homely congregational singing 
and the passages from the Bible, even from the 
fatuous pages of Science and Health read alter- 
nately by the Readers — a man and a woman — are 
all nerve-soothers. But the doctrines, so far as they 
can be gleaned from a mixture of metaphysical terms 
and commentaries on numerous passages from the 
Bible — a mass of " confused feeding " — appear to 
centre round the problems of the nature of Matter 
and of Sin. Matter is but the subjective state of 

1 See ante, p. 183, and Faith and Works of Christian Science, p. 71. 
By Stephen Paget. 



260 THE QUESTION 

what is here called mortal mind. Mind is the prin- 
ciple of the Universe. All disease is the result of 
education and can carry its ill effects no further 
than mortal mind maps out the way. We weep 
because others weep; we yawn because they yawn, 
and we have small-pox because others have it; but 
mortal mind, not matter, contains and carries the 
infection. " You say a boil is painful, but that is 
impossible, for matter without mind is not painful. 
The boil simply manifests your belief in pain. To 
prevent disease or cure it mentally let spirit destroy 
the dream of sense. A little girl, who had occasion- 
ally listened to my explanation, wounded her finger 
badly. She seemed not to notice it. On being ques- 
tioned about it she answered ingeniously : ' There 
is no sensation in matter.' " A budding psycho- 
physiologist ! 

" Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, 
sin, disease. Sin is error: it is no part of man's 
true nature; only Truth alone can destroy." 1 

Messrs. Lodge and Barrett and less prominent be- 
lievers in telepathy may learn a lesson from the Chris- 
tian Scientists in their utilisation of that assumed 
phenomenon. Thereby the afflicted who are absent, 
no matter at what distance from the appointed 
healers, can be cured. The longitude of the various 
soul-communion time-tables is made known to the 

1 Science and Health, p. 113. 

I am tempted to repeat the story of a lady Christian Scientist who, 
calling on a sick neighbour, was told by the servant that her mistress 
was too ill to be seen. " Tell her," said the lady, " that her illness is 
not of the body; she thinks she's ill, and when she leaves off thinking 
she'll be well. I'm going away for a few days and will call again as 
soon as I am back." She did this, and on asking the servant how her 
mistress was, the girl said: "Well, ma'am, she thinks she's dead!" 



CHRISTIAN SCIENCE— MRS. EDDY 261 

scattered invalids (fees prepaid) ; then they meet 
at the given hour to receive the telepathic energies 
which radiate from the healing Word. The com- 
mand is : " Join the Success Circle. . . . The 
Centre of that Circle is my omnipotent WORD. 
Its vibrations radiate more and more powerfully 
day by day. As the sun sends out vibrations, so 
my WORD radiates Success to 10,000 lives as easily 
as to one." 

Based on religion of a sort, and appearing to 
throw a new light on old problems, denying the 
reality of matter, of disease, suffering and sin, 
denouncing drugs and doctors, and impudently as- 
serting that "obedience to the so-called physical laws 
of health has not checked sickness," and proclaiming 
this in the name of Christian Science, there can be 
little wonder that many have found in it a balm 
more soothing even than that which the old lady de- 
rived from the blessed word " Mesopotamia." You 
get a cold in the head and you cure it " through the 
realisation of the omnipresence of Love." Such is 
the magic power of Science and Health that a Chris- 
tian Science publication tells a story of a little girl 
who read passages from that book to a lame sparrow 
till it flew away! 

It cannot be denied that the testimonies of heal- 
ing which form a part of the week-night services at 
the various churches are genuine experiences. The 
neurotic, the hypochondriac, the depressed, the suf- 
ferer from le tnalade imaginaire — each bear witness 
to the cures wrought upon them, as they honestly 
believe, by the mind-medicine of Christian Science. 
But these maladies are functional, and the remedy 



262 THE QUESTION 

is only another name for rest cure, strengthened by 
exercise of what in theology is called faith, but which 
is only another name for cultivation of quietude. 
Every wise doctor makes use of the power of sug- 
gestion. And it is recognised that, even in cases 
of threatened organic trouble, brain-mental influence 
has been effective in arresting it. But no developed 
organic diseases, no accidents needing surgical treat- 
ment, have been, nor can be, dealt with successfully 
by prayer and faith. A broken leg is not mended by 
the fatuous assurance given in Science and Health 
that " bones have only the substance of thought 
which formed them," and therefore " no breakage 
or dislocation can really occur," and there have been 
many sad cases where lives have been sacrificed 
through the sick person's obstinate faith in the ef- 
ficacy of the mind cure. 



PART IV 
SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 



XII 

SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 

" Obscurwm per obscurius." Whatever we know nothing about, let us 
make the explanation of everything else. 

VAIN is the effort to persuade ourselves that 
no bias or prepossession determines our view 
of things concerning which two opinions are 
possible. Impartial attitude is a delusion, especially 
when we deal with the marvellous; "nothing," as 
Montaigne says, "is so firmly believed as that which 
is least known." Every generation, in its own way, 
seeketh a sign, and the spiritualists believe that a 
sign has been given; that the door is opened; the 
veil lifted; the silence of the ages broken by voices 
from the Beyond. 

With the dawn of self -consciousness — the knowing 
that he knows — man reached the plane where con- 
ceptions of himself as something apart from his 
surroundings were possible; and, with this, hazy 
wonderment on his destiny. The lust of life, the 
impulse of the " glory of going on and still to be," 
possessed and has never left him: while the belief 
that death is not the end of man had powerful im- 
petus from the dreams of the night and the shadows 
of things cast by the day. On such and like unsub- 
stantial phenomena the fabric of belief in immor- 
tality has been raised: a fabric built on the emotions 

265 



266 THE QUESTION 

and, seemingly, as unstable as its foundations. 
Out of the incomprehensible has risen the illusive: 
specious feelings have begotten the belief that what 
is desired must needs have fulfilment; that "being 
weary proves that man has where to rest." Even 
the poet from whom this line is quoted, in apostro- 
phising his dead father, must needs speculate: 

" O strong soul, by what shore 
Tarriest thou now? For that force 
Surely has not been left vain! 
Somewhere, surely, afar, 
In the sounding labour-house vast 
Of being, is practised that strength, 
Zealous, beneficent, firm ! " 1 

It is especially at seances that the emotions, 
compact as they are of fear, hope and wonder, 
and when undisciplined, parents of countless evils, 
have unchecked play. The attitude of the sitters is 
receptive, uncritical ; exaltation of feeling strengthens 
the wish to believe; the power of suggestion, whose 
continuous influence in social evolution from a remote 
past cannot be over-estimated, is dominant, and the 
senses are prepared to see and hear what they are 
told. As needful to-day as when he gave it more 
than sixty years ago is Faraday's warning against 
the " tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we 
wish for, and the necessity of resistance to those 
desires." 2 As with his fellow-conjurer, sense- 
deception is the medium's chief tool, the attention 
and concentration of the befooled onlookers are di- 
verted by his patter, while dim light or total dark- 
ness as essentials of his trade effect the rest. Added 

1 Rugby Chapel. By Matthew Arnold. 
a Science and Education, p. 50. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 267 

to these there is the fatigue which in time over- 
comes the power of the sense-organs to report truly. 
Surely one can trust one's senses: we say, seeing is 
believing; whereas the story of man's advance is 
the story of his escape from the illusions of the 
senses, especially when they stimulate a dominant 
idea or obsession. If we believed what we saw, we 
should hold to the error that the earth is flat and 
that the sun revolves round it. We still talk of 
sunrises and sunsets. 

And there is no safety, only peril, in numbers; 
the medium can more easily hypnotise or hallucin- 
ate a circle. In their inquiry into Mesmer's methods 
the Committee laid stress on the fact that perform- 
ances in which excitement and contagion have full 
play are more successful than private ones. There 
is active what M. Gustave le Bon calls " the 
psychological law of the mental unity of crowds," 
as manifest, for example, in the recurring epidemic 
mental disorders of history, from, to name no earlier 
one, the chorceamania or the dancing hysterics of 
the fourteenth century to the religious revivals of 
our own time. 

Concerning the amazingly clever Davey, who so 
deceived the very elect as to obtain from them cer- 
tificates as to the supernormal character of his tricks, 
" the feature is not," says a writer quoted by M. le 
Bon, " the marvellousness of the tricks themselves, 
but the extreme weakness of the reports made with 
respect to them by the non-initiated witnesses. It 
is clear that witnesses even in number may give cir- 
cumstantial relations which are completely erroneous, 
but whose result is that, if their descriptions are 



268 THE QUESTION 

accepted as exact, the phenomena which they describe 
are inexplicable by trickery." 1 

So long as man lives on this planet he will be 
hoaxed and hocussed. The clever shoemaker who, 
posing in uniform as Captain of Kopenick, walked 
into the Rathaus, told the burgomaster that he was 
dismissed and frightened him into surrendering the 
municipal cash-box, made the world laugh at the be- 
fooled German; but the laugh was turned against 
us when the story of the arrival of 150,000 Russian 
soldiers in France via England had general credence ; 
in fact, there are people who still believe it. Nor 
is expert knowledge, as foregoing examples of be- 
fooled men of science have shown, any security 
against deception. Shrewd Thomas Hobbes of 
Malmesbury — himself a timid man — says in his 
Leviathan, " the most part of men, though they have 
the use of Reasoning a little way, as in numbering 
to some degree, yet it serves them to little use in 
common life in which they govern themselves, some 
better, some worse, according to their differences of 
experience, quickness of memory and inclinations 
to severall ends." 2 Parallel with this is Herbert 
Spencer's remark that " men are rational beings in 
but a very limited sense, that conduct results from 
desire," 3 and a similar comment by Dr. Henry 
Maudsley that " it is a plausible but quite false pre- 
sumption that mankind in general act on rational 
principles." 4 The tendency in each one of us is to 

1 " Annates de Science Psychique." The Crowd, p. 49. By G. le Bon. 
2 Leviathan, Part I., chapter v., p. 31. (Oxford, 1881. Reprint of 
the first edition.) 
8 Autobiography. Vol. ii., p. 366. 
* Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings, p. 65. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 269 

travel along the line of least resistance; the appar- 
ent solution of a problem, especially when the prob- 
lem deals with matters of gravity, is welcomed, as 
relief from the labour of thinking and from the pain 
of new ideas. As Giordano Bruno said: "Ignor- 
ance is the finest science in the world, because it is 
acquired without labour and pains and keeps the 
mind free from melancholy." 1 

Hence, to quote the late Professor William James : 
" Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and 
in the greatest matters this is most the case." 
Apposite to this are the lines which Henry Sidgwick 
composed in his sleep, or at least awoke thinking of : 

" We think so, because other people all think so, 
Or because — or because, after all, we do think so; 
Or because we were told so, and think we must think so. 
Or because we once thought so and think we still think so; 
Or because, having thought so, we think we will think so." 3 

A stock argument of the easy-going believers in 
Spiritualism is: How can we deny the genuineness 
of the phenomena, from raps to messages through 
" controls," when some eminent and learned men 
declare their belief in them? Writing to my wife, 
the distinguished author, Eden Phillpotts, re- 
marks : " At Birmingham the attitude towards Sir 
Oliver Lodge is rather amazing. He seems to be 
regarded as an intellectual giant at the University, 
which I visited. A railway foreman with whom I 
had a talk argued thus about Sir Oliver. He ad- 
mitted that his ideas and opinions were remarkable, 
but, he said, ' he's a great man and wise and learned, 

1 Giordano Bruno. By W. Boulton. 

2 Henry Sidgwick : a Memoir, p. 124. 



270 THE QUESTION 

so who are we uneducated, common men that we 
should think we know better than him? ' " The 
foreman spoke for the multitude who do not and 
cannot discriminate: they assume that the man who 
can speak with unchallenged authority on the sub- 
ject of which he is master is entitled to speak with 
the same authority of anything and everything else. 
" When," says Hobbes, " a man cannot assure him- 
self of the true causes of things, he supposes causes 
of them, or trusteth to the Authority of other men, 
such as he thinks to be his friends and wiser than 
himself." * An expert in physics may be ignorant 
of biology and psychology; he may never have read 
a book on anthropology and hence remained ignorant 
of the invaluable material bearing on the history of 
Spiritualism in such classics as Primitive Culture 
and The Golden Bough, wherein are supplied anti- 
septics to Spiritualism. The physicist and the 
mathematician are not competent witnesses to the 
truth or falsity of what lies outside their province. 
They deal with what is exact, definite, and in 
unvarying relation, which begets in them a serious 
limitation. On the contrary, the biologist and psy- 
chologist, whose concern is with living things, are 
confronted with variations and exceptions which can- 
not be confined within any formula. Something to 
check any cocksureness is always manifesting itself 
in the phenomena which they investigate. 

Herein may be found a key to the fact that, with 
the exception of the late Dr. A. R. Wallace, who, as 
a young man, believed that " electro-biology " was 
a supernormal phenomenon, it is mostly from 

1 Leviathan, Part I., chapter xii., p. 79. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 271 

physicists that Spiritualism derives support. What 
little trust in the value of their testimony is war- 
ranted is seen in the deceptions to which they have 
fallen willing victims. To cull only three examples, 
take Sir William Crookes, with his reiteration of 
belief in Florence Cook as a medium of the material- 
isation of spirits, after her detection in fraud: Sir 
Oliver Lodge, in his belief, after witnessing them, in 
the genuineness of the performances of Eusapia 
Palladino, and the admission afterwards that he 
had been befooled: and Sir W. F. Barrett asserting 
his conviction that the dowser discovers the presence 
of water by " the faculty of clairvoyance " and pos- 
session of a " supersensuous perceptive power." * 
And this last-named deliverance in the teeth of an 
adverse Report of a Committee of Engineers and 
Surveyors appointed to examine into this alleged 
power 2 : " Whatever sensitiveness to underground 
water may exist in certain persons, of which some 
evidence has been given, it is not sufficiently definite 
and trustworthy to be of much practical value. The 
diviners, as a rule, confine their attention to small 
streams of water, and as there are few places where 
these cannot be found, they may well show a large 
percentage of success." This confirms the conclusion 
given in a paper by Mr. T. V. Holmes in the Journal 
of the Anthropological Institute, November, 1897, 
written in answer to a paper on " Water Divining," 

1 Psychical Research, p. 183. " I believe all true clairvoyance to 
be spirit impression and that all true dowsing is the same." — A. R. 
Wallace to Professor Barrett: Letters and Reminiscences of A. R. 
Wallace. Vol. ii., p. 208. 

2 The Sanitary Record and Municipal Engineering, 2nd May, 1913, 
p. 466. 



272 THE QUESTION 

contributed by Sir W. F. Barrett to the XXXIInd 
Part of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical 
Research. Mr. Holmes says: "As to the nature of 
the personal peculiarities of those in whose hands the 
rod turns violently, I will only add that they prob- 
ably resemble in nervous organisation those who be- 
come intensely excited at religious meetings. The 
amateur diviner appears to be influenced solely by 
his inner sensations: the professional by his inner 
sensations together with his practical knowledge of 
water-bearing surface-beds. Both unite in the 
erroneous belief that underground water exists (in 
water-bearing beds) concentrated at certain spots 
and absent a few feet away. Consequently, the 
facts as to the distribution of underground water 
seem to be fatal to the notions that the diviner's 
sensations, whatever their origin, are caused by the 
peculiar nearness of water at the points where they 
are specially felt, or that he possesses any peculiar 
abnormal faculty for its discovery." 1 

The reader will judge for himself in what degree 
the authority of these eminent physicists, in their 
assertions of belief in graver matters where 
mechanical tests fail us, is impaired by these 
examples. 

On one of the rare occasions when that champion 
trickster and acutest of women, Madame Blavatsky, 
spoke the truth, she said: " I have not met with 
more than two or three men who knew how to 
observe and see and remark on what was going on 
around them. It is simply amazing! At least nine 
out of every ten people are entirely devoid of the 

1 P. 254. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 273 

capacity of observation and of the power of remem- 
bering accurately what took place even a few hours 
before. How often it has happened that, under my 
direction and revision, minutes of various occurrences 
and phenomena have been drawn up; lo, the most 
innocent and conscientious people, even sceptics, even 
those who actually suspected me, have signed en 
toutes lettres as witnesses at the foot of the minutes! 
And all the time I knew that what had happened 
was not in the least what was stated in the 
minutes." x 

Adverse comment continues to be made on the 
aloofness of attitude of the larger number of scien- 
tists toward Spiritualism. In Modern Spiritualism 
the late Frank Podmore criticised with some asperity 
their refusal to take the thing seriously. 2 

Science knows no finality. As M. Duclaux finely 
said: "Because science is sure of nothing, it is 
always advancing." If telepathy can be proved; 
if the " hitherto unknown force " which Sir William 
Crookes assumed as the only explanation of Home's 
levitation and fire ordeals can be demonstrated to 
exist; science will welcome it as a further unveiling 
of the arcana of nature. Up to the present no such 
verification has come, and investigation, thus far, 
warrants no invocation of the supernormal to explain 
so-called " spiritual " phenomena. It is, as Hobbes 
wrote two hundred and sixty years ago: " Ignorance 
of naturall causes disposeth a man to Credulity, so 
as to believe many times impossibilities : For such 

1 A Modem Priestess of Isis, p. 156. By V. S. Solovyoff. Translated 
by .Valter Leaf. (1895.) 
* Modern Spiritualism. Vol. ii., p. 145. 



274 THE QUESTION 

know nothing to the contrary, but that they may be 
true, being unable to detect the impossibility. And 
Credulity, because men loved to be hearkened unto 
in company, disposeth them to lying, so that Ig- 
norance itself, without Malice, is able to make a 
man both to believe lyes and tell them: and some- 
times also to invent them." x 

But what are the facts? The table-turning mama 
spread to this country in 1853, and the hold which it 
had on the public mind, especially when attributed to 
spiritual agency, caused both professional and scien- 
tific men to investigate the phenomenon. Amongst 
the latter Faraday took the leading part in an in- 
quiry, the outcome of which was the conviction that 
the movements were due to unconscious muscular 
action of the hands upon the table. To prove this, 
he devised a very simple apparatus in the shape of 
two sheets of mill-board, between which he placed 
two glass rollers and fastened the whole with two 
elastic bands, an index-pointer being fixed to the 
apparatus to indicate whether the upper board 
moved on the lower one — i.e. whether there was 
pressure towards one side or the other. The upper 
board was freely movable upon the rods when the 
tips of the fingers of one or both hands were placed 
lightly on it. " Such a ' planchette ' (as it was sub- 
sequently termed) was placed on the table beneath 
the fingers of each operator in a ' table-turning ' 
experiment, and it was found that whereas in pre- 
vious experiments without a planchette the table 
had been made to move by the hands lightly resting 
on it, now there was no movement of the table but 

1 Leviathan, Part I., chap, ii., p. 77. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 275 

a slight forward displacement, more or less conspicu- 
ous, of the upper board of the planchette as it moved 
on its glass rollers under the gentle pressure of the 
operators' fingers. In this way Faraday showed 
that it was possible for honest experimenters to apply 
unconsciously a slight push to the table, and so for 
their united unconscious efforts to cause it to move 
or turn in a manner which was to them mysterious 
and supernatural, whereas when their fingers were 
separated from the table by the mobile planchette, 
the * push ' in each case merely caused the upper 
board of that little intermediary to move instead of 
acting upon the table itself." * Complete proof of 
unconscious muscular action was supplied by the 
fact that when the sitters understood the purpose 
of the apparatus and kept their attention on it, no 
movement followed; when they looked away from 
it, it wobbled, though they believed that they kept 
it in position. 

In his lecture on " Mental Education," Faraday 
says: " A universal objection was made to it by the 
table turners. It was said to paralyse the powers of 
the mind — but the experimenters need not see the 
index, they may leave their friends to watch that 
and their minds may revel in any power that their 
expectation or their imagination can confer. So 
restrained, a dislike to the trial arises, but what is 
that except a proof that whilst they trust themselves 
they doubt themselves, and are not willing to proceed 
to the decision, lest the trust which they like should 
fail them, and the doubt which they dislike rise to 
the authority of truth." 2 

1 Science and Education, p. 69. 3 Ibid., p. 51. 



276 THE QUESTION 

Sir Ray Lankester adds that " By the irony of 
human fate, Faraday's detective ' planchette ' was 
subsequently fitted with a pencil and used by ' oc- 
cultists ' to obtain writing caused by the unconscious, 
though sometimes conscious, direction of its move- 
ments by the hands of an inquirer lightly laid on it. 
Such writing was interpreted by the ' occultists ' as 
' messages from the spirit world.' On the other 
hand, ' planchette-writing ' and similar experimental 
methods offer to the psychologist a valuable means 
of exploring the directive movements given uncon- 
sciously to the muscles of the body by the brain 
in many persons when thus subjected to properly 
guarded and well-devised experiment." x The 
" planchette " is still taken seriously by spiritualists. 
Mr. J. A. Hill, while admitting that no success 
attended his experiments with it, discusses its possi- 
bilities as to supernormal results. 2 

After the action brought by the widow Lyon 
against Home, in 1868, it transpired that Faraday 
had accepted an invitation from the defendant to a 
seance, but that Faraday had imposed conditions of 
investigation which Home would not accept. Little 
wonder therefore that, choosing his own terms, he 
was never detected by his dupes. 

In 1864 Tyndall was present at a seance at the 
house of Mr. Newton Crosland, a prominent spirit- 
ualist. He tells the result in his Fragments of 
Science: " Nothing occurred which could not have 
been effected by fraud or accident." 3 In January, 

1 Psychical Investigations, p. 221. 
3 Science and Education, p. 69. 
8 Ibid., pp. 314-322. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 277 

1874, Darwin went to a seance at the house of his 
brother Erasmus, Mr. (afterwards Sir Francis) 
Galton, G. H. Lewes and " George Eliot " being 
also present. The notorious Williams was the me- 
dium. After describing the " fun in the dark, chairs, 
flutes, bells and candlesticks flying about," Darwin 
concludes: " The Lord have mercy on us all, if we 
have to believe such rubbish" 1 (see ante, p. 123). 
Huxley attended " a carefully arranged seance " at 
the same house. A full report of this is given in 
the Life and Letters 2 : " My conclusion is that Mr. 
X is a cheat and an impostor." Huxley had already 
been present at several seances at the house of his 
brother George as early as 1852, given by Mrs. 
Hayden, the first medium imported from America; 
also at the houses of various friends, meeting me- 
diums " by whom he was most unfavourably im- 
pressed." Hence his justification, after such sifting 
of the matter, for declining to join a committee of 
investigation promoted by the London Dialectical 
Society in 1869. " If anybody would endow me 
with the faculty of listening to the chatter of old 
women and curates in the nearest cathedral town, I 
should decline the business, having better things to 
do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not 
talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends 
report them to do, I put them in the same category. 
The only good that I can see in the demonstration 
of the truth of Spiritualism is to furnish an ad- 
ditional argument against suicide. Better live a 
crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk 

1 Life and Letters. Vol. iii., p. 187. 

2 Vol. i., pp. 419, 420. 



278 THE QUESTION 

twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a seanee. ??1 
At a sitting with Mr. Vout Peters, held on 3rd 
March, 1916, Mr. J. A. Hill says there came this 
message, apparently from Raymond Lodge, through 
" Moonstone " : " I have come into touch with 
Huxley." Then Moonstone says: "Who's the old 
man got funny whiskers? Square forehead, hair 
caught away here (indicating temples), nose full, 
clean-shaven lips, upper lip hangs over, scientific, 
cold. Not a man you would tell your heart troubles 
to. Very clever. Cold, scientific aspect." (It is 
fairly certain that this is meant for Huxley; the 
description is good, though the coldness — a popular 
view — is probably exaggerated.) The words in 
parentheses are Mr. Hill's comment. Huxley seems 
to have escaped talking the " twaddle " which he 
dreaded. But we ask with Geronte in Moliere's 
Fourberies de Scapin, " Que diable allait-il faire 
dans cette galere? " 

In Mrs. Piper's trances " some few of the persons 
mentioned were obviously dream-creations. For 
example, an Adam Bede as well as a George Eliot 2 
are alluded to as real individuals on the other side! 
The controls through whom Mr. Hill receives com- 
munications appear to be a spiritual democracy: at 
least they reach a low plane in one who says: " Now, 

1 Speaking of a certain member of the Psychical Research Society, 
he said: "He is one of the people who talk of the 'possibility' of the 
thing, who think the difficulty of disproving a thing as good as direct 
evidence in its favour." — Life and Letters. Vol. ii., p. 425. 

" As finite added to finite never approaches a hair's-breadth nearer 
to infinite; so a fact incredible in itself acquires not the smallest acces- 
sion of probability by the accumulation of testimony." — Burton's Life 
and Letters of David Hume. Vol. i., p. 480. 

'Psychical Investigations, p. 208. By J. A. Hill. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 279 

I'm only an uneducated man — I'm owd Billy — 
and I can only talk Lancashire dialect, an' tha 
mayn't understand it." (In the flesh he was Billy 
Matthews.) Billy adds that he has seen Richard 
Hodgson, who says to him, "I've brought my old 
friend, Henry Sidgwick, with me." 1 

Lord Kelvin, whose attitude towards belief in the 
supernatural was sympathetic, said that fraud or 
bad observation explained belief in Spiritualism. 
Professor Clifford, after examination into the gen- 
uineness of the phenomena, put his conclusion with 
brevity: "The universe is made up of matter and 
motion, and there's no room for ghosts." More 
weighty, because of his position as the first President 
of the American Branch of the Society for Psychical 
Research, is the deliverance of the late distinguished 
astronomer, Simon Newcomb. " Nothing," he said, 
" has been brought out by the research of that So- 
ciety and its able collaborators except what we should 
expect to find in the ordinary course of nature." 2 
Mr. Podmore says that in the fifteen years which 
have elapsed since, in 1882, Professor Henry Sidg- 
wick, in his Address to the Society for Psychical 
Research, felt warranted in assuming that a mass 
of evidence to justify impartial examination would 
be forthcoming, the hope has not been realised. 
" While few opportunities have been afforded to the 
Society's representatives for continuous investigation 
of any sort, no positive results have been obtained 
worthy of record. All spiritualist manifestations 
appear indeed to have become less frequent, not only 

1 Psychical Investigations, p. 145. 

" Nineteenth Century, January, 1909, p. 139. 



280 THE QUESTION 

in private circles, but with professional mediums. 
The Spiritualist papers no longer teem with records 
of marvellous seances. There has been little to 
encourage the Society to investigate the perform- 
ances of professional mediums." * Its main service 
has been, as Mr. Haynes says, " to extend the region 
of experimental psychology," 2 and to make evident 
that the mind is of far more complex nature than 
had been suspected. 

Save in raps and in table-tiltings and leapings, the 
decline in the presentment of the physical group of 
phenomena is continuous, and there is even a slump 
in materialisation and spirit photographs. Evidence, 
if it deserves the name, centres more upon communi- 
cations from the departed through a control. The 
change is one for which spiritualists are coy at giving 
an explanation. 

No eminent man of science since Huxley has dwelt 
more insistently on the limitation of human faculties 
and on the insoluble eternal problem of the Why, 
the Whence, and the Whither than Sir Ray Lan- 
kester. In an essay on " Science and the Un- 
known," he demands that all the reputed marvels 
of Spiritualism shall be brought before the bar of 
science for examination and testing. 

" Lovers of science have never been unwilling to 
investigate such marvels if fairly and squarely 
brought before them. In the very few cases which 
have been submitted in this way to scientific exam- 
ination, the marvel has been shown to be either 

1 Studies in Psychical Research, p. 83. 

2 The Belief in Personal Immortality, p. 108. An admirable treatise, 
compendious and adequate. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 281 

childish fraud or a mere conjurer's trick, or else the 
facts adduced in evidence have proved to be entirely 
insufficient to support the conclusion that there is 
anything unusual at work or beyond the experience 
of scientific investigators. It is unfortunately true 
that most persons are quite unprepared to admit the 
deficiencies of their own powers of observation and 
memory, and are also unaware of their own ignor- 
ance of perfectly natural occurrences which contin- 
ually lead to self-deception and illusion. Moreover, 
the capacity for logical inference and argument is 
not common. The whole past and present history 
of what is called ' the occult ' is enveloped in an 
atmosphere of self-deception and of readiness to be 
deceived by others to which misplaced confidence in 
their own cleverness and power of detecting trickery 
renders many — one may almost say most — people 
victims." 1 

Sir H. B. Donkin has had considerable experience 
of many mediums, and speaks with the authority of 
a mental pathologist of the first rank when, as 
already cited, he contends that the demonstrative 
value claimed for the conclusions in Raymond as 
proved " rests upon nothing but assertion." 

This is cogently emphasized by the eminent 
neuropathologist, Dr. Charles Mercier, in an article 
on " Sir Oliver Lodge and the Scientific World " 
in the Hibbert Journal of July, 1917. He says that 
" it is not for the scientific world, or for any one else, 
to disprove Sir Oliver Lodge's assertions, his doc- 
trines, his interpretations, or his facts. The onus 
is on him to prove them. He is to bring forward 

1 Diversions of a Naturalist, p. 364. 



282 THE QUESTION 

evidence of fact, not of interpretation of fact; and 
if he asks us to accept his interpretations, they must 
be of such a nature that no other interpretation can 
be placed upon the fact. As long as his facts are 
susceptible of interpretation by the operation of 
natural laws, he has no right to ask us to follow 
him in supposing that they are supernatural. As 
long as he offers us interpretation of fact in the 
place of fact, he is not entitled even to a hearing. As 
long as his facts are observed only by himself or 
by those who have already avowed their desire to 
interpret them in a certain way, he has no right to 
ask us to accept them as indisputable." * 

This irrefragable argument was anticipated by 
Faraday. He says " that the asserter of any new 
thing has no right to claim an answer in the form of 
Yes or No> or think, because none is forthcoming, 
that he is to be considered as having established his 
assertion. So much is unknown to the wisest man 
that he may often be without an answer; as fre- 
quently he is so, because the subject is in the region 
of hypothesis, and not of facts. In either case he 
has the right to refuse to speak. I cannot tell 
whether there are two fluids of electricity or any 
fluid at all. I am not bound to explain how a table 
tilts any more than to indicate how, under the con- 
jurer's hands, a pudding appears in a hat. The 
means are not known to me. I am persuaded that 
the results, however strange they may appear, are 
in accordance with that which is truly known, and, 
if carefully investigated, would justify the well-tried 
laws of nature. . . . Let those who affirm the 

1 P. 613. And see Dr. Mercier's Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge, 
pp. 59, 131. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 283 

exception to the general laws of nature, or those 
others who, upon the affirmation accept the result, 
work out the experimental proof." 1 

If justification of the attitude of men who have 
" no axe of their own to grind " were necessary, 
this can be found in the following testimony of the 
well-known " Thought-reader," Mr. Stuart Cumber- 
land. It is quoted from an article which he con- 
tributed to The Daily Mail of the 5th January, 
1917. After recounting his experiences at home 
he says: "I shortly afterwards went to the West, 
followed by a visit to the East, in pursuit of my 
investigations, hoping upon hope that I should 
eventually find some genuine instance of occult mani- 
festation. I heard much about the alleged miraculous 
from people whose honesty of purpose was beyond 
question and whose veracity was above suspicion, and 
I saw much to which an occult origin was attached, 
but the assumed occultism of which proved, on the 
one hand, to be the outcome of highly strung expec- 
tation or false sensorial impressions or, on the other, 
to be the result of skilfully applied chicanery. 

"Ina word, I have never yet in any land or with 
any medium or adept discovered any alleged occult 
manifestation that was not explicable upon a per- 
fectly natural basis and which in the majority of 
instances could not be humanly duplicated under 
precisely similar conditions. This, as the true be- 
liever would say, has been my misfortune. But 
there it is. So inherent is this hankering after the 
supernatural in human nature that many would 

1 Science and Education, pp. 61, 62. 



284 THE QUESTION 

much rather seek for a supernatural than a natural 
explanation of what may seem mysterious or out of 
the way to them. 

" It is just this longing in human nature upon 
which these professional psychic frauds are preying 
to-day. 

" To-day, with its heavy death toll and fateful 
uncertainty so closely affecting every section of the 
community, is indeed the moment for the practi- 
tioners on the shady side of spiritism. There is a 
natural desire among the bereaved, or those in doubt 
as to the actual facts surrounding the ' missing,' to 
seek for news and guidance unobtainable through 
the ordinary channels. These credulous folk are 
told that this or that medium is a real wonder, who 
has given such and such a person the most astound- 
ing revelations. So what has been vouchsafed others 
can quite as well be revealed to them. Hence the 
run upon the plausible ' crooks,' who so readily trade 
upon their credulity. 

" The foolish, credulous dupes never for a moment 
consider the utter incongruousness of the association 
of their beloved dead or missing with these profes- 
sional ' spookists.' It never enters their heads that 
if the spirit of any one dear to them could return at 
all, it would be to them direct that his return would 
be manifested, and that to have to go to some strange 
.' crook ' and part with money for the privilege of 
being put in touch with the spirit is the height of 
absurdity. They are told that they themselves are 
not mediumistiCj and that it is only through the truly 
mediumistic that such communications are possible. 
Besides, it is the fashion of ' the thing ' to go to 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 285 

these mediums, who, £ poor dears,' must live and 
who are entitled to payment for the exhaustion they 
frequently undergo in getting in touch with the 
spirits. No labourer, in fact, is so worthy of his 
hire as one in the spiritual vineyard. 

" And the wine he presses, as he rakes in the notes, 
is the flow of tears from the sorrowful and distressed. 

"It is not only a shady business, but it is a mean 
and cruel one and should be put an end to. If the 
foolish cannot or will not protect themselves, they 
must be protected against their own folly." 

" Again and again," writes Dr. Furness, " me- 
diums have led round the circles the materialised 
spirits of their wives and introduced them to each 
visitor in turn. Fathers have taken round their 
daughters, and I have seen widows sob in the arms 
of their dead husbands. Testimony such as this 
staggers me. Have I been smitten with colour- 
blindness? Before me, as far as I can detect, stands 
the very medium herself, in shape, size, form and 
feature true to a line, and yet, one after another, 
honest men and women at my side, within ten 
minutes of each other, assert that she is the absolute 
counterpart of their nearest and dearest friend; nay, 
that she is that friend." x 

Sir Oliver Lodge cautions the bereaved against 
devoting so large a portion of time and attention as 
he has given in getting and recording communica- 
tions from the spirit world. He bids them accept 
his assurance — he settles once and for all by an ipse 
dixit the momentous question — that those who have 
departed this life " are still active and useful and 

1 Fact and Fable in Psychology, p. 163. By Joseph Jastrow. 



286 THE QUESTION 

interested and happy — more alive than ever in one 
sense — and to make up their minds to live a useful 
life till they rejoin them." * 

Bowed down with grief and clutching, like drown- 
ing men, at straws, these mourners, while respecting 
Sir Oliver's precept, will hasten, if their purses 
permit, to follow his example. They will desire to 
be themselves assured that those who have departed 
this life can confirm what he says. Hence no cau- 
tion that he can give can lessen his unenvied re- 
sponsibility in causing a rush of sorrowing parents 
and relatives to mediums, preferably to the woman 
through whom he sought news from his dead son. 
Mrs. Leonard and the rest of them will bless his 
name for the harvest of fees thereby reaped; book- 
ings " in advance " are reported by the newspapers 
as active. 

The quotation cited above is, in its elusiveness, 
typical of aught else that Sir Oliver Lodge says 
about another life. " We change our state at birth 
and come into the world of air and sense and myriad 
existence; we change our state at death and enter 
a region of what? Of ether, I think, and still more 
myriad existence; a region in which communion is 
more akin to what we here call telepathy, and where 
intercourse is not conducted by the accustomed in- 
direct physical processes, but a region in which 
beauty and knowledge are as vivid as they are here; 
a region in which progress is possible and in which 
' admiration, hope and love ' are even more real than 
dominant." 2 Such mellifluous and soothing words, 
penned, we know, by a kindly soul, should fall like 

1 Raymond, p. 342. 2 P. 298. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 287 

music on the ears of the incarnate devils of the 
Kaiser type. For admission to that region will be 
theirs, so Raymond tells us, without qualification, 
after they have done penance in a reformatory, a 
sort of celestial Borstal, and have there shed their 
" nasty ideas and vices." 1 This " new revelation " 
falls into line with the belief of the late Dean 
Farrar. " He did not deny the existence of hell ; 
he only thought that fewer people will go there, and 
perhaps find it much less disagreeable than is gen- 
erally supposed." 2 Even the devil may have a 
chance: 

"Auld Nickie-ben! 
O wad ye tak' a thought an' men' 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 
Still hae a stake." 

All manner of questions are suggested by the fore- 
going. No hint of the location, or of the latitude 
and longitude of the ethereal region, has been given 
in any purported communications therefrom. When 
Sir Oliver speculates about the Universe he contra- 
dicts himself on the same page. " I have learned," 
he says, " to regard it as a concrete and full-bodied 
reality with parts accessible and intelligible to us, 
all of it capable of being understood and investigated 
by the human mind. . . . We must admit that the 
whole truth about the simplest thing is assuredly be- 
yond us; the Thing in itself is related to the whole 
universe and in its fulness is incomprehensible." 3 

Although, in wise restraint, he makes " no asser- 
tion concerning the possible psychical use of the 

1 P. 230. 

2 An Agnostic's Apology, p. 98. By Sir Leslie Stephen. 
'Raymond, p. 380. 



288 THE QUESTION 

Ether of Space," he assumes that each spirit is com- 
posed of a detached portion of it, otherwise " Eternal 
form " would not " divide the eternal soul from all 
beside." In his chapter on the " Resurrection of the 
Body," in Raymond, we gather that materiality clings 
to it. 1 Mutilated limbs are replaced — there is Ray- 
mond's communication that he " knew a man that had 
lost his arm but has got another one " 2 — while bodily 
marks, " scars and wounds are reassumed for pur- 
poses of identification and when re-entering the 
physical atmosphere for the purpose of communica- 
tion with friends." 3 (This tempts to ribald quo- 
tation from the old farce of Box and Cox: "Have 
you a strawberry mark on your left arm? Then 
you are my long-lost brother.") " Details connected 
with clothes and little unessential tricks of manner 
may — in some unknown sense — be assumed too. 4 
" The clothes," says another writer, " are not, of 
course, material clothes; they are mere accessories 
assumed, so to speak, to facilitate the question of 
identity." 5 

This assumption of unbroken relations between 
soul and body is one of several points on which 
Spiritualism is in conflict with orthodox teaching, 
although that is vague enough as to the state and 
location of the soul between death and resurrection. 
With an ingenuity which has never failed it, the 
Roman Catholic Church solves the difficulty by 
putting the soul in purgatory. In what mental 
muddle a Protestant Doctor of Divinity plunges 

1 " Something of matter, very much refined, will remain." — Boswell's 
Life of Johnson. Vol. ii., p. 163. (Birkbeck Hill's Edition.) 

2 Raymond, p. 195. * Ibid., p. 324. 

* P. 324. 6 Ghostly Phenomena, p. 154. By Elliot O'Donnell. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 289 

himself has example in an answer to the problem 
given by the Rev. Professor David Smith to a 
correspondent in The British Weekly of the 18th 
January, 1917. " We shall not," he assures his 
querist, " lack embodiment in the Hereafter. There 
awaits us a nobler vesture, ' a habitation built by 
God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens.' This is the resurrection-body, ' a spiritual 
body (cf. 1 Cor. xv. 44) fashioned like unto our 
Lord's glorious body' (Phil. iii. 21). The comfort, 
however, is only partial, or, rather, it is ultimate 
and not immediate. For it is at the Second Advent 
that the dead will be raised incorruptible (1 Thess. 
iv. 16), and meanwhile their souls must remain 
naked, divested of their earthly tent-dwelling, and 
yet unclothed with their ' habitation from heaven.' 
. . . Here then lies the comfort of the Christian 
revelation of the resurrection of the body. It is our 
assurance that heaven will be no cheerless world of 
unsubstantial ghosts, but a kindly and homely scene 
where we shall meet in the fulness of an ennobled 
humanity and resume the old affections with a deeper 
and warmer intimacy." 

Contrast with this tawdry patchwork of texts 
and comment the pagan Emperor Hadrian's address 
to his soul at the approach of death: 

" Animula, vagula, blandula, 
Hospes, comesque corporis ! 
Qua? nunc abibi^in loca, 
Pallidula, frigida, nudula, 
Nee, ut soles, dabis joca!" 1 
1 " Soul of mine, thou fleeting, clinging thing, 
Long my body's mate and guest, 
Ah ! now whither wilt thou wing, 
Pallid, naked, shivering, 
Never, never more to speak and jest." 
But an adequate translation is not possible. 



290 THE QUESTION 

Dwelling for a moment on the overwhelming feel- 
ing aroused in the presence of the revelations of 
astronomy, especially in their correction of the geo- 
centric theory in which the sun was conceived of as 
an appanage to the earth, and the stars as a subordi- 
nate detail — " He made the stars also " x — we find in 
spiritistic teaching a survival of the anthropocentric 
theory. This, as is well known, had an ardent 
exponent in the late Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace 
and, implicitly, has support from Sir Oliver Lodge, 
who sees in each of the temporary occupants of this 
speck, one of others as the sand of the seashore 
innumerable, " an infinite worth and vital impor- 
tance." It may be so ; we know not, in this, as in all 
the problems that confront us, " we may handle the 
veil as much as we please ; but we cannot raise it." 2 

It involves no small stretch of the imagination to 
envisage a procession of millions upon millions of 
individuals of such " infinite worth and vital im- 
portance," from the semi-brutal, proto-human an- 
cestors to the noblest specimen of Homo sapiens, 
pouring in continuous stream from an ageless past 
to an eternal future under conditions where, in Sir 
Oliver's words, " they are more alive than ever," 
each one of these myriads — for there can be no 
exceptions — remaining in touch with earth. Each 
one: the myriad babes who opened their eyes here 
only to close them in death; the aged gathered as 
"shocks of corn, fully ripe"; the idiots; the 
lunatics; the crippled; the untold hecatombs of the 
slain, the starved, the tortured; the eaters and the 

1 Genesis i. 16. 

* Freethinking and Plain Speaking, p. 157. By Sir Leslie Stephen. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 291 

eaten — victims of ruthlessness and rapine ; awakening 
the reflection whether human existence has not been 
more a curse than a blessing in this tear-stained, 
blood-soaked world. Mingled with that motley- 
crowd, " in that equal sky," so Raymond tells us, 
for himself and others, are their " faithful dogs to 
bear them company." This is confirmed by no less 
an authority than " Owd Billy," who communicates 
through a medium, Tom Tyrrell, that " the lower 
brute creation passes into spirit life, same as us." * 
The reflection may occur to some, after reading 
the communications purporting to come from the 
dead and proclaimed as a " new revelation," that 
they will not shine by comparison with the utterances 
of writers of whom Sir Oliver Lodge speaks as 
inspired. " No man also having drunk old wine 
straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is 
better." 2 



RAYMOND 



THE BIBLE 



O. J. L. Raymond, you said 
your house was made of bricks. 
How can that be? What are the 
bricks made of? 



"As it is written, Eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
entered into the heart of man, the 
things which God hath prepared 
for them that love Him." — 1 Cob. 
ii. 9. 



" For we know that if our 
earthly house of this tabernacle 
were dissolved, we have a building 
of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." — 
2 Cor. v. 1. 



Feda. That's what he hasn't 
found out yet. He is told by 
some, who he doesn't think would 

1 Psychical Investigations, p. 147. 



"Ye are come unto Mount Sion, 
and unto the city of the living 
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and 

2 Luke v. 39. 



292 



THE QUESTION 



lead him astray, that they are 
made from sort of emanations 
from the earth. He says there's 
something rising like atoms rising, 
and consolidating after they come: 
they are not solid when they come, 
but we can collect and concentrate 
them — I mean those that are with 
me. They appear to be bricks, and 
when I touch them, they feel like 
bricks, and I have seen granite 
too. 1 

Can you fancy you see me in 
white robes? 2 My suit I expect 
was made from decayed worsted 
on your side. Some people here 
won't take this in even yet — about 
the material cause of all things. 
They go talking about spiritual 
robes made of light, built by the 
thoughts on the earth plane. I 
don't believe it. 



My body's very similar to the one 
I had before. The internal organs 
... to all appearances, are the 
same as before. 

People here try to provide every- 
thing that is wanted. A chap came 
over the other day, who would have 
a cigar. " That's finished them," 
he thought. He means he thought 
they would never be able to pro- 
vide that. But there are labora- 
tories over here and they manu- 
facture all sorts of things in them. 
Not like you do, out of solid 
matter, but out of essences and 
ethers and gases. It's not the 
same as on the earth plane, but 
they were able to manufacture 
what looked like a cigar. He 
(Raymond) didn't try one himself, 



to an innumerable company of an- 
gels. To the general assembly and 
church of the first-born, which are 
written in heaven, and to God the 
Judge of all and to the spirits of 
just men made perfect." — Heb. 
xii. 22, 23. 



" And one of the elders an- 
swered, saying unto me, What are 
these which are arrayed in white 
robes? and whence came they? 
And I said unto him, Sir, thou 
knowest. And he said to me, 
These are they which came out of 
great tribulation, and have washed 
their robes and made them white 
in the blood of the Lamb." — Rev. 
vii. 13, 14. 

" Who shall change our vile 
body, that it may be fashioned 
like unto his glorious body." — 
Phil. ii. 2. 

" And there shall in no wise 
enter into it anything that de- 
fileth, neither whatsoever worketh 
abomination, or maketh a lie." — 
Rev. xxi. 27. 

" Within thy gates no thing doth 
come 
That is not passing clean, 
No spider's web, no dirt, no dust, 
No filth may there be seen." 
F. B. P. 
Based on St. Augustine (c. 1580). 

" They shall hunger no more, 
neither thirst any more; neither 



*P. 198. 



2 P. 189. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 293 



because he didn't care to: you 
know he wouldn't want to. But 
the other chap jumped at it. But 
when he began to smoke it, he 
didn't think much of it: he had 
four altogether, and now he 
doesn't look at one. They don't 
seem to get the same satisfaction 
out of it, so gradually it seems to 
drop from them. But when they 
first come they do want things. 
Some want meat, and some strong 
drink; they call for whisky sodas. 
Don't think I'm stretching it when 
I tell you that they can manu- 
facture even that. But when they 
have had one or two, they don't 
seem to want it much — not those 
that are over here. 1 

There are men here and there 
are women here. , . . There don't 
seem to be any children born here. 
People are sent into the physical 
body to have children on the earth 
plane: they don't have them here. 2 



shall the sun light on them, nor 
any heat. For the Lamb which is 
in the midst of the throne shall 
feed them, and shall lead them 
unto living fountains of waters: 
and God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes." — Rev. vii. 16, 17. 



"Jesus answered and said unto 
them, Ye do err, not knowing the 
scriptures, nor the power of God. 
For in the resurrection they 
neither marry, nor are given in 
marriage, but are as the angels of 
God in heaven." — Matt. xxii. 29, 
30. 



Contrast with these banalities from Raymond, 
audaciously asserted to have come from a discarnate 
spirit who had been accorded sight of the Redeemer, 
the lofty note struck by the melodious Silurist, the 
restraint of which adds to its majesty: 



He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know, 

At first sight, if the bird be flown; 

But what fair well or grove he sings in now, 

That is to him unknown. 

And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams 

Call to the soul when man doth sleep, 

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, 

And into glory peep." 

1 P. 198. 2 P. 197. 



294 THE QUESTION 

I cannot know what may be the effect of the 
quotations from Raymond on other minds, but on 
my own it is to desire extinction rather than to pass 
an endless life amidst such unsavoury and repellent 
surroundings. For myself, the only heaven for which 
I might indulge desire is renewal of communion 
with those who have been, and who are, dear to me 
in this life — if this is not to be, then grant me " a 
right long, endless, and unawakening sleep." x 

Certainly one result of the nauseous communica- 
tions dredged from the subconsciousness of mediums 
in feigned or genuine trance cannot be the revival of 
interest in the minds of the thoughtful concerning 
a future life, an interest which, among such, is wan- 
ing to vanishing point. 2 Happily the void thereby 
created is filled by the sense of obligation to the 
past, of duty to the present, and of responsibility to 



1 Moschus: Lament for Bion, idyll iii. 

3 A significant example of this is supplied by no less an authority 
than the Dean of St. Paul's in a sermon preached in the Cathedral last 
Easter Sunday, in the course of which he said: On the subject of 
immortality people differed greatly, both in what they desired and 
what they found it possible to believe. Some desired passionately a 
continuance of the familiar life with which the body was inseparably 
associated. Tennyson, it was said, grew crimson with excitement if he 
heard the Resurrection called in question. " If human immortality be 
not true," he said, " then no God, but a mocking fiend, created us." 
Browning clung to the belief of reunion with his dead wife, without 
whom continued existence would be intolerable. George Meredith was 
content with a super-personal immortality. " I am myself," Dr. Inge 
declared, " most in sympathy with Browning's faith that love is stronger 
than death. But as for the survival of the physical organism by which 
we are known to others as individuals, when we think of our bodily 
and mental make-up, with all its inherited and acquired defects, its 
disharmonies which have fretted and tormented us all our days, do we 
want it resuscitated in another state of existence?" What would be 
intolerable would be to have to believe that our ideals themselves should 
perish. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 295 

the future; of realisation of the conditions under 
which we live and which are not of our seeking. 
But whatever their cause, they supply opportunity 
for service to, and advancement of, the humanity of 
which we are parts, and whose joys and sorrows it 
is our destiny to share. 

It may even, as the sense of these responsibilities 
grows, be incumbent to combat actively a " belief 
which may easily become an unhealthy occupation, 
preventing us seeking for salvation here " x : a belief 
against which Sir J. G. Frazer brings this powerful, 
this true indictment: 

" It might with some show of reason be main- 
tained that no belief has done so much to retard the 
economic and thereby the social progress of man- 
kind as the belief in the immortality of the soul, for 
this belief has led race after race, generation after 
generation, to sacrifice the real wants of the living 
to the imaginary wants of the dead. The waste 
and destruction of life and property which this faith 
has entailed are enormous and incalculable . . . 
disastrous and deplorable, unspeakable the follies 
and crimes and miseries which have flowed in prac- 
tice from the theory of a future life." 2 

It should be needless to disclaim that any charge 
against the integrity of Sir Oliver Lodge and his 
fellow-spiritualists is made in the animadversions 
passed on their credulity in these pages. But when 
he affirms " I am as convinced of continued existence 
on the other side of death as I am of existence here. 
It may be said, you cannot be as sure as you are of 

1 Evolution of Religion. Vol. ii., p. 243. By Edward Caird. 
* Psyche's Task, p. 52. 



296 THE QUESTION 

sensory experience, I say I can," * such plainness of 
speech must be met by equal plainness. 

You, Sir Oliver, knowing, as you must have 
known, the taint which permeates the early history 
of Spiritualism, its inception in fraud and the detec- 
tion of a succession of tricksters from the Fox girls 
onwards, and thereby cautioned to be on your guard, 
have proved yourself, on your own admission, incom- 
petent to detect the frauds of Eusapia Palladino. 
You and Sir William Barrett, who says that " there 
is evidence of his supernormal knowledge," 2 accept 
and quote, as parts of a " new revelation," from the 
automatic writings of the Rev. Stainton Moses. 
Your faith in the integrity of Mrs. Piper, despite 
her failure, crowned by her confession, with- 
drawn, it is true, but none the less a fact, remains 
unshaken. 3 You lose a dear son in the holiest of 
causes for which a man can die; you forthwith 
repair to a modern Witch of Endor to seek, at 
second hand, consolations which assuredly he whom 
you moum would, in preference, pour direct into 
your attuned and sympathetic ear; you — one of the 
most prominent and best known of men — are simple 
enough to believe that your anonymity and that of 
your wife and family was secure at the early seances 
which Mrs. Leonard and Mr. Vout Peters gave you. 
And with what dire result — the publication of a 
series of spurious communications, a large portion 

1 Raymond, p. 375. 2 Psychical Research, p. 227. 

8 " It next occurred to Mrs. Piper to be invaded by the crowd of 
verbose pseudo-spirits who used to communicate with the late Rev. 
Stainton Moses, who himself, as a posthumous ' communicator,' was a 
transparent and boastful liar." — Andrew Lang. Letter to The Pilot, 
23rd November, 1901. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 297 

of which is mischievous drivel, dragging with it into 
the mire whatever lofty conceptions of a spiritual 
world have been framed by mortals. 

What is more serious, your maleficent influence 
gives impetus to the recrudescence of superstition 
which is so deplorable a feature of these days. The 
difference between the mediums whom you consult 
and the lower grade of fortune-tellers who are had 
up and fined or imprisoned as rogues and vagabonds 
is one of degree, not of kind. The sellers of the 
thousands of mascots — credulity in which as life- 
preservers and luck-bringers is genuine — the palm- 
ists, and all other professors of the occult, have in 
you their unacknowledged patron. 

Thus you, who have achieved high rank as a 
physicist, descend to the plane of the savage animist, 
surrendering the substance for the shadow. Surely 
the mysteries which in your physical researches meet 
you at every turn, baffling your skill to penetrate, 
should make you pause ere you accept the specious 
solutions of the momentous problems which lie on 
the threshold of the Unknown Hereafter. 

You, and those who credit you and other notable 
men of science as speaking with authority, will not be 
shaken in your convictions; but there may be some 
who, through reading these pages, will agree that 
when — it may be, I fear, in no near future — the 
ghost of Spiritualism is laid its epitaph should be: 

" BEHOLD,, I WAS SHAPEN IN INIQUITY, 

AND IN SIN DID MY MOTHER CONCEIVE ME." 

The Question may be, and should be, asked: 



298 THE QUESTION 

Granted that the evidence which the spiritualists 
adduce in support of their belief be of a nature which 
cannot be submitted to the conditions of observa- 
tion, experiment and proof required by science, are 
there not materials by which it may arrive at some 
undogmatic conclusion as to soul-survival? There 
are, and these are supplied by comparative psychol- 
ogy: the science of mind. 

Comparative anatomy has demonstrated the fact 
of correspondence of bodily structure, bone for bone, 
muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve, between the 
highest mammals and man ; his fundamental relation- 
ship to the anthropoid apes being further proven by 
the fact that the same kind of blood flows through 
the veins of the two. And comparative psychology 
has proved that there is no break in the chain of 
mental evolution. " The development of the mind 
in its early stages and in certain directions of 
progress is revealed most adequately in the animal." * 
There are not two processes of evolution, one of the 
body and the other of the mind; there is only one 
process in one series of graduated stages; hence 
the history of the evolution of brain and nerve is also 
the history of the evolution of mind. 2 And it is in 
the evolution of the brain that the mammals have 
scored; man, as the "roof and crown" of all living 
things, thereby securing that lordship in the animal 
realm of which he has made terrible abuse. His 

1 Story of the Mind, p. 35. By Prof. Baldwin. 

8 " The power of building up appropriate cerebral mechanism in 
response to individual experience on what may be called ' educability ' 
is the quality which characterises the larger cerebrum and is that which 
has led to its selection, survival and further increase in volume." — Sir 
Kay Lankester's The Kingdom of Man, p. 123. 



SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALISM 299 

dumb subjects, could they have faculty of human 
speech, would curse that dominance. 

This proof of psychical continuity, that ardent 
and most credulous dupe of mediums, Dr. Alfred 
Russel Wallace, disputed. His conception of the 
denizens of the Beyond excluded animals : " No 
ravenous beast shall go up thereon; it shall not be 
found there." Co-formulator with Darwin of the 
doctrine of natural selection, he argued that it did 
not explain the origin of man's spiritual and in- 
tellectual nature, which, he contended, must have had 
another origin, an adequate cause to be found only 
" in the Unseen Universe of Spirit." The question 
which he did not attempt to answer follows: — At 
what stage in man's evolution was this " spiritual 
essence or nature " superadded? x Was it, once and 
for all, in the proto-human creatures who represent 
both apes and men, being a blend of both ere their 
divergence from a common ancestor ; or is there a 
special creation of the soul in every human being at 
birth? To put the question is to submit a 
problem the solution of which rests with its 
propounders. 

To Job's question, " If a man die, shall he live 
again? " science can answer neither " yes " nor 
"no"; all that can be said is that the evidence 
supplied by comparative psychology does not sup- 
port the belief in a future life. It leaves it 
unsolved. 

" Into this Universe and Why not knowing, 
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing: 
And out of it, as Wind along the waste, 
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing." 

1 Darwinism, p. 474<. 



300 THE QUESTION 

One fact is clear: there has been no advance in 
ideas of the soul, and no advance in knowledge of 
the conditions of existence in any after life, from the 
dawn of thought to the present day. Spiritualism 
is the old animism " writ large." 



POSTSCRIPT 

When my friend Edward Clodd told me that he 
wished to associate my name with this book, I 
accepted the compliment, because I felt that it was 
desirable, indeed a duty, that some member of the 
scientific fraternity should have the courage to 
support his indictment. After reading through the 
proofs, I feel impelled to go a step further and to 
offer these few lines in direct support of his thesis. 
Written with utmost sincerity of purpose, straight 
from the shoulder, in conversational style, without 
attempt at Stevensonian polish, the book appears 
to me to be a cumulative and forceful gravamen 
against a movement every aspect of which is per- 
nicious — pernicious alike to the prime movers and 
to the public; one which, at all costs, in support of 
sanity of human outlook, we should seek to stamp 
out with every weapon at our command. 

That the fair name of Science should be sullied 
by the publication of the "nauseating drivel," as 
Mr. Clodd properly terms it, put forward in Ray- 
mond is not only regrettable but disastrous to our 
cause; that neither the Church nor educated opinion 
should have had the courage, the sense of duty, to 
take real exception to its promulgation cannot well 
be regarded otherwise than as proof that we are 
living in an age of intellectual decadence; at least, it 

301 



302 THE QUESTION 

shows that even the inklings of scientific method 
are not yet spread abroad. 

Seemingly, the rules of evidence are disregarded 
and logic entirely discarded, by the credulous fol- 
lowers of the spiritualistic faith. We are forced, 
by such facts, to recognise that education counts 
for very little; that our boasted civilisation is but 
a thin veneer; that man, as Carlyle persistently 
maintained, is infinitely gullible. It is clear that 
we still retain his primal nature and instincts: the 
tendency to belief in the occult is our heritage. 

Indeed, the human mind is strangely built; 
apparently it has compartments and these are not 
necessarily interlocked. The great Faraday is prob- 
ably the most perfect example the world has known 
of the experimental philosopher; the statements in 
which he has recorded his experimental studies are 
pure logic for the most part. His lecture on 
" Observations on Mental Education," published in 
a recent reprint of lectures delivered at the Royal 
Institution of Great Britain, in 1854, under the title 
of Science and Education, from which Mr. Clodd 
has given quotations, is one of the most brilliant 
essays ever written on the methods of philosophical 
thought. But while recognising the value of such 
methods in ordinary life and insisting on the need 
of inculcating the faculty of " proportionate judg- 
ment " through scientific education, Faraday clearly 
recognizes the limitations of the human intellect. 
In matters of religion — he was a member of the 
small sect known as Glassites or Sandemanians — 
he advisedly put science aside and gave play to his 
primitive instincts; he then became the pure child 



POSTSCRIPT 303 

of nature, a child of faith. We are, it seems, most 
of us at once both Jekylls and Hydes ! 

It is certain that only the few can be scientific in 
any proper sense of the term. The philosopher, like 
every other form of genius, is born, not made; he 
is more or less a freak. And occupation does not 
necessarily beget general competence. A man may 
be most distinguished as a worker within some very 
narrow field and yet little more than a child in 
general affairs. 

Our modern science is the outcome of experiment 
and observation logically interpreted. But the ele- 
ment of interpretation always plays a large part: 
and we may easily err in our interpretations. Our 
experiments may be accurately conducted and our 
observations sound, yet our inferences may be alto- 
gether unsound. The true man of science, however, 
is one who never rests satisfied with an explanation: 
he is always on the look-out for further evidence 
in support of any conclusion to which he may have 
been led; he is always prepared to alter his view 
or hold his judgment in suspense if the evidence be 
unsatisfactory. 

Probably the most telling indictment of telepathy 
and spiritualism is that afforded by the late Pro- 
fessor Henry Sidgwick of Cambridge, the distin- 
guished moral philosopher, who was an eminently 
scientific man in his outlook. To quote statements, 
made by two of his friends, Professor Sorley and 
Mr. F. Podmore, after his death, which are cited in 
his biography : * 

i Henry Sidgwick. A Memoir. By A. S. & E. M. S. London. Mac- 
millan & Co. 1906. 



304 THE QUESTION 

" Sidgwick exerted a powerful influence, both intellectual 
and moral, upon his pupils. But his temperament was too 
critical, his intellect too evenly balanced, to admit of his 
teaching a dogmatic system. . . . What he taught was much 
more a method, an attitude of mind; and his teaching was 
a training in the philosophical temper — in candour, self- 
criticism and regard for truth. Upon those who could re- 
ceive it, his teaching had a finer effect than enthusiasm for 
any set of beliefs ; it communicated an enthusiasm for truth 
itself; the rigour of self-criticism as well as the ardour of 
inquiry " (p. 308). 

" He always seemed to me one of those very rare char- 
acters whose insight was so pure and true that his decision, 
whether in practical matters or in purely intellectual prob- 
lems, would not be biassed even unconsciously by any per- 
sonal preference. Great lawyers, no doubt, are trained to 
deal with one particular class of subjects in this matter. But 
Mr. Sidgwick's gift of clear, unbiassed vision on all questions 
alike has always seemed to me a very rare quality. I don't 
think he himself realised how rare. He often gave the rest 
of the world credit — undeserved credit, as I used to think — 
for being as disinterested in their judgments as himself" 
(p. 319). 

Sidgwick — he had been President of the Society 
for Psychical Research — was in close touch with the 
spiritualists of his day, including Sir Oliver Lodge; 
he took part in their so-called investigations on 
numerous occasions. But he was beyond reach of 
the " confidence trick " and although, apparently, he 
was willing, if not anxious, to be convinced, he was 



POSTSCRIPT 305 

never able to believe that the manifestations were 
otherwise than illusory. 

The fact that men such as Sir Wm. Barrett, Sir 
Wm. Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge have been 
ardent advocates of spiritualistic doctrines can only 
be of " evidential " value if it can be shown that their 
inquiries have been conducted in accordance with 
the canons of scientific method. As this is not the 
case; as moreover they have been shown repeatedly 
to have been the victims of deception, their testi- 
mony has no special weight and is not to be re- 
garded in any way as " scientific evidence." Only 
when methods such as Sidgwick followed are adopted 
shall we be able to give any special credence to 
the statements put forward. As already pointed out, 
Sidgwick was never persuaded into belief. 

As I write this, a letter appears in The Sunday 
Times (16th September, 1917) under the title, " Sir 
Oliver Lodge's Innocence," written by Mr. Douglas 
Blackburn. After telling how he and a confederate 
hoaxed Messrs. Myers, Gurney, Podmore and others 
by sham telepathic demonstrations and after com- 
menting on " the extraordinary gullibility displayed 
by Messrs. Myer and Gurney," he thus concludes: 

" I say deliberately, as the result of long acquaintance 
with and personal knowledge of most of the leading Occultists 
of the past forty years, that, while I acknowledge their abso- 
lute honesty and intent, I would not lay a shilling against a 
ten-pound note on any one of them not being roped in by 
the venerable Confidence Trick at the first time of asking." 

"No more telling statement could be made. 

I have had occasion before to-day to express my 



306 THE QUESTION 

opinion of Sir Oliver Lodge as a critic, in an 
article published in the quarterly review Bedrock, 
in January, 1914. My title, " Sir Oliver Lodge, 
Intolerant, Infallible," was sufficiently significant. 
To quote one passage: 

" Sir Oliver Lodge apparently is an advocate of obscu- 
rantism in diction; as a matter of practical politics — from 
the point of view of those members of the priesthood of 
science who desire to be credited with oracular attributes — 
there may be something in it ; but to my mind such a policy is 
absolutely unscientific." 

This criticism may be applied verbally to Ray- 
mond; several of the chapters are nothing short of 
obscurantism run riot, utterly unscientific in tone, 
thought and expression. 

It is to be feared, however, that too much of 
" modern science " is but a spurious article ; even 
when sound on the experimental side, the interpre- 
tation is too often faulty and heavily biassed. Too 
many are playing at science who are not, and can- 
not ever be, scientific; science, in fact, is under a 
cloud of ecclesiasticism. To quote from the close of 
my article on Sir Oliver Lodge above referred to : 

" Opinions stick, in these days, before they are proved to 
be sound — if uttered by those in authority. At all costs, 
this must be prevented if science is to be of service to the 
State. Authority must be kept in order." 

Henry E. Armstrong. 



INDEX 



Aboriginal Siberia, 78, 92, 98 

Abou ben Adhem, 238 

Acta Sanctorum, 92 

Adam, 19 

Adyar, 253, 256 

Akasic force, 253 

Akaz, 252 

Alexander of Abonoteichos, 33, 37, 
50, 104 

Algonquins, 28 

Amazons, 19 

America, spiritualism in, 36 

American mediums, 34, 52; men- 
tality, 34 

Amorous table, 79, 225 

Anatomy of Melancholy , 153 

Angekok, lS5n. 

Angels at Mons, 177 

Animal immortality, 26 

Animal magnetism, 142, 144 

Animism, 18, 27 

Anthropological Society, 102 

Apparitions, 178 

Aquinas, Thomas, 159 

Arnold, Matthew, 266 

Ashburnam, Dr., 23 

Atsakoff, Mr., 25 

Aura, 184; of cat, 184m. 

Australian natives, 18, 24, 156 



B 



Babes, wonderful, 236 

Bacon, 173; Essay es of, 173». 

Balfour, Mr. Gerald, 244 

Ballon, Adin, 23 

Balls for crystal-gazing, 154 

Bangs Sisters, 132 

Barrett, Sir W. F., 54, 63, 64, 89, 
90, 91, 112, 150, 165, 168, 183, 
184, 188, 232, 238, 240, 247, 260, 
296 

Beauchamp, Miss, 14 

Bell, Robert, 44 



Besant, Mrs., 145, 255, 256 

Bible, 291-294 

Biddy (control), 217 

Bishop, W. Irving, 153 

Blackall, Mr., 62 

Blavatsky, Madame, 50, 104, 250- 

256, 272; exposure of, 255 
Blindfolding, 150-151 
Blue-book, 186 
Body-cells, 16 
Body, experiments on weight of, 

88, 89 
Bombay, 253 
Boston, 34 

Boston Globe, The, 209 
Brabrook, Sir E., 247 
Braid, James, 146 
Brain-cells, 14, 22, 174 
Bramwell, Dr. Milne, 172 
Brand, 82, 125 
Breath and Spirit, 19 
Bridport, Giles de, 25 
British Association, 234 
British Weekly, The, 289 
Brockway, Madame, 217 
Brook Farm, 34 
Browne, Sir T., 19n., 27, 93». 
Browning, Robert, 62, 87 
Bruno, 269 

Buddha, 92, 149, 181, 256 
Buguet, M., 133 
" Bunhoseded," 52 
Burmah medium, 193 
Burnet's History of My Own 

Time, 73 
Bury, Prof. J. B., U6n. 
Butcher, Prof., 245 



Cagliostho, 143 
Cambridge, 57 
Candles, blessing of, 125 
Canoes, spirits on, 79 
Caraffa, Cardinal, 133 
Carpenter, Edward, 26, 29, 61, 63, 
131 



307 



308 



INDEX 



Carpenter, W. B., 152 
Carrington, Hereward, 58, 95, 104, 

115, 119, 124, 184, 186 
Celsus, 105 
Cheves, Mrs., 222 
Chlorine (control), 190, 217». 
Christian Science, 257-262; its 

doctrine of disease, 260; its doc- 
trine of matter, 259 
Chrysostom, 149 
Cigars, ethereal, 227 
Cintz, Dr., 209 
Circles, spiritualist, 36, 37 
Clairvoyant medium, tricks of the, 

186 
Clairvoyants, 29, 33, 39 
Clifford, Prof., 123, 279 
Clifford, Sir Hugh, 175 
Clouston, Sir T. S., 172, 175 
Cock Lane Ghost, 68-73 
Colley, Archdeacon, 129 
Columbia University, 124 
Communicator, 187 
Congo tribes, 20-21 
Connecticut disturbances, 84 
Conner, D. B., 208-209 
Consciousness, 16 
Controls, 55, 55n., 112, 187 
Conway, M. D.„ 123, 129 
Cook, Florence (Mrs. Corner), 60, 

126, 182; detection of, 126 
Cook, Walter, 225 
Copertino, St. Joseph of, 92 
Coulomb, M., 253 
Cox, Sergeant, 23 
Crawford, Earl of, 46 
Crawford, W. J., 89 
Crawley, A. E., 25 
Credulity, 274 
Crookes, Sir W., 46, 60, 88, 93, 99, 

123, 126, 129, 273; his creed, 234, 

235 
Crosland, Newton, 276 
Cross-correspondence, 243-249 
Crystal-gazing, 154-166 
Cumberland, Mr. Stuart, 283 
Curie, M. and Madame, 57 
Czaplicka, M. A., 78, 92, 98, 194 



D 



Daily Chronicle, 117, 130 
Daily Mail on spirit-photographs, 
133 



Darwin, C, 123, 299 

Darwin, Sir G. H., 203 

Davenport Brothers, 48, 101; con- 
fession of, 103 

Davenport, Prof., 64 

Davey, S. J., 103, 106-108, 267 

David, King, 122, 135 

Davis, A. J., 39, 85, 135 

Dawson, Ellen, 107, 150 

Dee, Dr., 160 

Dene Hareskins, 147 

Descartes, 22 

Devachan, 145 

Devant, Mr., 90 

Dewar, Sir James, 129 

Dialectical Society, 277 

Didier, Alexis, 107, 151 

Dionysius, Ear of, 244 

Discoverie of Witchcraft, 38, 67, 
78, 82, 182 

Divination, modes of, 155-163 

Donkin, Sir H. B., 103, 171, 173, 
281 

Dowsing, 271 

Doyle, Sir Conan, 17, 211 

Dramatis persona at seances, 187 

Dreams, 18 

Drummer of Tedworth, 67 

Duclaux, M., 273 

E 

Ear of Dionysius, 244 
Ectoplasy, 239 

Eddy, M. B., 34, 143, 183, 257-262 
Eddy Brothers, 252 
Eglington, W., 50; detection of, 103 
Elbe, Louis, 145 
" Electric " girls, 85 
Elliotson, Dr., 151 
Elongation, 47, 90, 96 
Endor, Witch of, 182 
Epworth Rectory, ghost at, 28, 68 
Esoteric Buddhism, 255 
Essay on Man, 43 
Ether, 23, 163, 287, 288 
Ethereal medium, 23 
Ethereal soul, 20 

Evidence for the Supernatural, 
The, 174, 192 

F 

Fairies, nature of, 27 
Faraday, 170, 266, 274, 282 



INDEX 



309 



Farrar, Dean, 287 

Fasting, 147-149 

Fathers of the Church, 21 

Faunus message, 219 

Fay, Mrs., 89 

Feda, 26, 188, 217, 219, 226, 230 

Felidae, 95 

Ferguson, J. B., 48, 49, 102 

Feronia, 97 

Fire ordeal, 47, 90, 96-99; Fijian, 
98; Huron, 98 

Fludd, Robert, 142 

Fluidic relations, 145 

Ford, Cornelius, 73 

Fox girls, 35; detection and con- 
fession of, 84 

Fox, Katie, 35, 36, 58 

Frank, H., 24 

Franklin, Benjamin, 59, 144 

Fraudulent mediums, list of, 135 

Frazer, Sir J. G., 127, 157, 295 

Froude, 149 

Furness, Dr. H. H., 109, 285 



G 



Galen, 39 

Galton, Sir F., 277 

Gardner, Dr., 132 

Garfield, President, 111 

Ghost, Cock Lane, 68-73; Cor- 
nelius Ford's, 73; hand of, 
grasped, 73 

Gibbon, 148 

Gillson, Rev. Mr., 41 

Glanvil, 92 

Golden Bough, The, 270 

Goligher, Miss, 89 

Goodrich-Freer, Miss, 163 

Greatrakes, Master, 93, 142 

Greenlanders, 20 

Guppy, Mrs., 44, 59, 93, 95, 113, 
123 132 

Gumey, Edmund, 74, 167»., 201 



H 



Hair trick, 88, 119 

Hadrian, 289 

Hall, S. C, 48 

Hall, Dr. Stanley, 239 

Hallucinations, 174-180, 237; cen- 
sus of, 21; collective, 176, 367; 
committee on, 179, 



Hamlet, 27 

Hampole, 21 

Hand and foot dodge, 123 

Hands, Dr., 150 

Hare, Dr., 20 

Haunted houses, 65, 66 

Hayden, Mrs., 34, 40, 277 

Haynes, E. S. P., 210n., 280 

Henslow, Prof., 24 

Heme (medium), 59 

Hieroglyphed turnips, 40 

Hill, J. A., 24, 185, 209, 276, 278 

Hindus, 20 

Hirpi Sorani, 97 

Hobbes, 22, 65, 77, 178, 268, 273 

Hodgson, Dr., 106, 117, 122, 191, 

192, 206, 255 
Hogshead, frolics of, 95 
Holmes, T. V., 271 
Holy Ghost, 19 
Home (or Hume), D. D., Mff., 87, 

88, 90, 93, 273 
Homer, 27 
Homo sapiens, 290 
Horace, 97n., 220 
Houdin, R., 152 
Howard, J. and M., 206 
Howitt, A. W., 18, 156 
Howitt, William, 62 
Hume, 278 
Hunt, Leigh, 238 
Hunter, John, 175 
Huxley, 16, 123, 277, 278 
Hydeville knockings, 35, 38, 41, 58, 

62 
Hyperboreans, 91 
Hypnotism, 147, 172, 175 



Iamblichus, 91, 97 

Iliad, 27 

Incubation, 147 

Inge, Dean, 294 

Intelligence, the, 37 

Isis Unveiled, 251, 252 

Isis Very Much Unveiled, 255 



"Jackson, Mr.," 224 
James, Prof. W., 201, 211, 269 
Jastrow, Joseph, 33, 106, 110, 176 
Jesus, 19, 44, 148, 229, 230n. 



310 



INDEX 



Johnson, Dr., 72, 73 
Judaism, Early, 181 
Julian, 148 
Julius Ccesar, 27 

K 

Kelly, Edward, 160 

Kelvin, Lord, 279 

Kennedy, Mrs., 215 

Kennedy, Paul, 215 

Kidneys and crystallomancy, 162 

King/ John, 59, 116, 123, 124, 231, 

252 
King, Katie, 60, 123, 126 
Kingdom of Man, 169 
Kinglake, A. W., 158 
Kirk, Rev. R., 27, 142n. 
Knerr, Dr., 110 
Koot Homi, 253 
Kropotkin, Prince, 82 



Lane, E. W., 159 

Lang, Andrew, 60n., 98n., 99, 112»., 
118, 15in., 163, 199n., 208, 213, 
245, 248, 296m, 

Lankester, Sir E. Ray, 103, 168, 
169, 173, 276, 280, 298n. 

Latah, 176 

Law of Parsimony, 112 

Leaf, Dr. Walter, 191, 201, 202 

Le Bon, Gustave, 176, 267 

Leonard, Mrs., 189, 215, 225, 226, 
232, 286, 96 

Levitation, 43, 44, 90; legends of, 
92-94, 234 

Liar, The, 91 

Light, 57, 89 

Limbs, ethereal, 227 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 23, 53, 56, 63, 
64, 78, 111, 115, 118, 131, 154, 
165, 171, 172, 184, 187, 191, 215, 
242, 260, 269, 281, 286, 290, 
296 

Lodge, Lady, 79, 216, 225, 229 

Lodge, Raymond, 215, 278; and 
Jesus Christ, 229 ; clothes of, 130, 
226; photographs of, 222 

Lombroso, Prof., 235 

Lourdes, 178 

Lucian, 33, 37, 50n., 91, 104 

Lucretius, 18, 21, 26, 65 



Lund, T. W. M., 195 
Lyall, Sir A., 118 
Lyon, Mrs., 42, 276 

M 

MacAllister, Prof., 201 

McDougall, Duncan, 25 

Machen, Arthur, 177 

Magnetic Lady, 238 

Mahatmas, 251 

Manganja medicine-men, 80 

Maori seance, 60 

Marcillet, M., 151 

Maskelyne, J. N., 89, 102, 115, 116, 

117, "134, 239 
Maskelyne and Cook, 102 
Materialisation of spirits, 58, 121, 

126, 131, 280 
Matthews, Billy, 279, 291 
Maudsley, Dr., 175, 268 
Medium, psychology of, 183 
Mediums, 181-189, 240; and drink, 

54, 54ra., 114; fraudulent, 135; 

and light, 120; savage, 193 
Melanesians, 21 
Melville, John, 162 
Mercier, Dr. C, 281 
Meredith, George, 245, 296 
Mesmer, F. A., 142-144, 267 
Mesmerism, 146, 149 
Mind, evolution of, 298 
Monck, "Dr.," 44, 129, 130 
Monks, trickery of Franciscan, 82 
Mons, Angels at, 177 
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, 200 
Montaigne, 22, 65, 265 
Moonstone (control), 222, 225, 278 
Moore, James, 237 
Morselli, Prof., 235 
Morton Prince, Dr., 15n. 
Moses, W. Stainton, 37, 52, 59, 93, 

111-114, 128, 132, 190, 238, 241, 

296 
Motion at a distance, 56 
Mott, F. W., 16n, 
Motuan medium, 127 
Mumler, Mr., 132 
Miinsterberg, Prof. H., 122 
Murray, Prof. Gilbert, 29 
Myers, F. W. H., 14, 23, 52, 74, 

115, 117, 118, 139, 167, 191, 204, 

218, 221, 239 
Myers, Mrs. Eveleen, 221 



INDEX 



311 



N 

Nasqttape Indians, 79 
Nautical Almanack, 13 
Nerve-cells, 16 
Newcomb, Prof., 94, 279 
Newman, Cardinal, 231 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 175 
Nias Islanders, 25 
Nicaraguans, 21, 25 
Nistinares, 97 



Odic fluid, 145 
Olcott, Col., 252 
Old Calabria, 92 
Orleans, Mayor of, 82 
Osiris, 26 

Osier, Sir W., 147». 
Oteri, Dr., 121 
Owen, R. Dale, 53, 58 



Paget, Stephen, 183, 259». 

Palgrave, F. T., 77 

Palladino, Eusapia, 56 f., 115 f., 
235; detection of, 118, 124 

Paracelsus, 142 

Paris Committee, 119 

Parish, Edward, 179ra. 

Pasilalinic, 170 

Pausanias, 157 

Pelham, Geo., 191, 205, 206, 207, 
208 

Personal Equation, 13 

Personality, multiple, 14, 187 

Pnelps, Dr., 38, 84 

Phillpotts, Eden, 269 

Philoxenus, 245, 246 

Phinuit, 190, 198,, 211 

Phosphorus, 59, 113, 119 

Photographs, spirit, 62-64, 131-134, 
280; exhibition of, 62 

Piddington, Mr., 192, .243 

Piper, Mrs., 115, 184, 189, 190-214, 
296; confession and retractation 
of, 191; sources of her informa- 
tion, 192 

Pisa, 25 

Planchette, 274 

Pocha (control), 127, 217ra. 

Podmore, Austin, 107, 108 



Podmore, Frank, 20n., 23, 36, 40, 
41, 43, 50, 52, 54, 61, 74, 85, 87, 
88, 100, 102, 107, 108, 113, 120, 
127, 133, 152, 186, 192, 212, 273, 
279 

Poltergeists, 28, 33, 86, 95, 233 

Premonitions, 173 

Primitive Culture, 24rc., 80, 92, 101, 
270 

Psychical laboratory, 125 

Q 

Queen Victoria, 122 
Quimby, Mr., 258 



R 



Ralston, W. R. S., 81 

Rappings and rapping-alphabet, 

35, 37, 49, 81, 86n., 233 
Raymond, 17, 23, 26, 53, 55, 79, 130, 

187, 216, 219, 222, 232, 287, 288, 

293-294; Reflections on, 225 
Reichenbach von, 145 
Resurrection-body, 288 
Revivalists, 34 
Rhodes, Cecil, 231 
Richardson, Sir B. W., 99 
Richet, Prof., 56, 115 
Rita (medium), 128 
Robsahm, M., 140 
Rogers, E. Dawson, 135 
Roman Catholic Church, 19, 125, 

288 
Rope-tying trick, 49 
Rossetti, D. G., 21 
Rothe, F. A., 129 



Saint Paul, 181 

Samuel (control), 129 

Samuel (prophet), 182 

Satan, 28, 41, 93, 149, 182 

Saucer miracle, 254 

Savage dread of return of the 

dead, 125; idea of the soul, 19 
Science, Christian, 257-262 
Science and Health, 258 
Scot, Reginald, 38, 67, 78, 82, 182 
Scrying, 154 
Sealed letter, Myers', 221; Hannah 

Wild's, 221 



INDEX 



Seances, conduct of, 37; darkness 

at, 87, 113, 119, 124, 125, 145; 

prayers and hymns at, 44, 89, 

122, 225, 231 
Secret Commonwealth of Fairies, 

27, U2n. 
Seybert Commission, 109 
Shaler, Prof., 203 
Shaman seance, 194 
Shaw, G. Bernard, 75 
Showers, Miss, 59 
Siberian mediums, 194; funeral, 

228 
Siderists, 145 

Sidgwick, Prof. H., 115, 269, 279 
Silas Marner, 74 
Silurist (Henry Vaughan), 293 
Simpson, William, 251 
Sinnett, A. P., 36, 84, 145 
Slade, "Dr.," 49, 109, 233; detec- 
tion of, 103 
Slate trick, 50, 104; antiquity of, 

104 
Sludge, Mr., "The Medium? 87, 

113n. 
Smith, Rev. David, 289 
Snails, sympathetic, 170 
Society for Psychical Research, 21, 

65, 86, 117, 154, 160, 163, 172, 

179, 191, 221, 233, 243, 255 
Socrates, 178 
Solomon Islanders, 28, 79 
Solovovo, Count, 184 
Solovyoff, Mr., 255 
Soul as ethereal, 20-22; as replica 

of body, 25; weight of, 25 
Speers, Dr. and Mrs., 53, 59, 93, 113 
Spencer, Herbert, 268 
Spiers, James, 139k. 
Spirit, 19; -breathing, 20 
Spirits, materialisation of, 58, 121, 

126; photographs of, 62, 131-134; 

voices of, 27, 28 
Spiritualist, The, 128, 130 
Spurrell, H. G. F., 102n. 
Stead, W. T., 217, 231, 235 
Stephen, Sir L., 287 
Stewart, Prof. Balfour, 22 
Subliminal self, 14, 187 
Survival of Man, 53, 64, 131»., 

139n., 166n., 167, 184, 243». 
Swedenborg, 19, 24, 33, 39, 55, 112, 

139-142, 178 
Syracuse, 244 



Table tilting and turning, 37, 43, 

57, 216, 275 
Table, Sir Oliver Lodge's amorous, 

79, 225 
Tait, P. G., 22 
Talmud, 159 
Teeth, ethereal, 227 
Telepathy, 167-174, 260, 286 
Tellurists, 145 
Thackeray, 44». 
Theosophist Society, 252; temple, 

253 
Thief, detection of, 80, 156, 160 
Thomas, N. W., 155, 160, 163 
Threshold of the Universe, Oto 

the, 232 
Tobacco, 228 
Tongans, 20 
Trance state, 193, 278 
Trolls, 125, 146, 150 
Truth, 219». 
Tuckett, Dr. Ivor, 174, 192, 204, 

207, 230n. 
Tulloch, Principal, 17 
Turnips, hieroglyphed, 40 
Tylor, Sir E. B., 2in., 80, 149, 249 
Tyndall, Prof., 276 

U 

Uganda medium, 193 
Uncle Remus, 99 
Unseen Universe, 22 



Veda, Atharva, 158 
Vedas 96 

Verrall, Mrs., 165, 218, 243 
Verrall, Professor, 244 
Victoria, Queen, 122 
Virgil, 91, 97 

Visions of Swedenborg, 140 
Volckman, Mr., 126 
Vout Peters, Mr., 215, 222, 232, 
278, 296 

W 

Waddell, Lieut.-Col., 51 
Wake Cook, Mr., 129 
Wallace, A. R., 52, 56, 62, 64, 86, 
90, 99, 130, 235, 290, 299 



INDEX 



313 



Walpole, Horace, 69, 161 

Water-divining, 272 

Weight of medium's body, 88, 89; 

the soul, 25 
Wesley, Rev. S., 28, 68 
Whisky, ethereal, 228 
Wiggin, Rev. J. A., 258 
Wild, Hannah, 221 
Wilkinson, J. J. Garth, 140, 

141 
Willett, Mrs., 244 
William of Occam, 112». 
Williams (medium), 59, 123, 277; 

detection of, 128 
Wilson, Prof., 124 
Wilson, Rev. W., 182 



Wind and spirits, 61, 125 
Witch, Lancashire, 19 
Witch of Endor, 182 
Witchcraft, 28, 93 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 160 
Word, Omnipotent, 261 
World, The, 89 
Wriedt, Mrs., 115, 215, 230, 235 



Yahweh (Jehovah), 19 
Yucatan, 157 

Z 



Zoist, The, 150 



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